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QUEST 


BY 

MILES LANIER COLEAN 



yr k*> 

NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 




Copyright 1923 
By E. P. Dutton & Company 

All Rights Reserved 



PRINTED IN THE 
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

MIC 25’23 

©Cl A7116 53 


i 





QUEST 


i 

A LONE in a wide, bare room, with weary 
r\ desks cleared for the day, and grimy pine 
walls growing darker with the upward 
creeping of the dusk—the day gone, yet all 
its appurtenances and routines clinging about 
him—David Bullard sat in the heavy task of 
taking stock of himself. Two causes there were 
which evoked this mood: one, a torn letter, pieced 
together on the table before him; the other, the 
startled awareness, as of a somnambulist caught 
by himself in his walking, that the week to come 
would bring his thirtieth birthday. Between these 
causes was an association which was intimate and 
gravely compelling to his thought. 

And having once taken thought, there was, in 
his unfamiliarity with its usages, no escape from 
it. There was nothing of lightness or of humor 
in his pondering, no relief from the dread which 
it awoke in him. Even his hope was grim, like 
that of an anticipating highwayman. He frowned 
and compressed his lips with ascetic tightness. 

Thirty years old. The twenties had passed 


2 QUEST 

easily, almost casually, but thirty was a barrier 
of great distinctness. Even with an impatient 
man, with a man driven by fierce ambitions and 
vague fears, there was spacious future to the 
twenties—what one year did not bring another 
could—but thirty was already entering into that 
future. There could be no more trustful delay 
—what had not come must now come at once. 
Half of his life might be already gone; and with 
the stern searching of one whose self-explorations 
are the more intensive because of their rarity, he 
labored to discover the end to which he had trav¬ 
eled thus far. 

He shook his head. All was obscure, baffling 
of definition, like the office in twilight. He knew 
only that since he could see nothing, he had, so 
far, reached no vantage point. He strove to look 
beyond him—for the time ignoring the torn 
letter beneath his hand—but the dusk became 
ponderable, facing him with a wall he could not 
pierce. Balked there, his glance turned back¬ 
ward; and as it did so, too easily, a dark spirit 
beset him, relentlessly clinging despite his effort 
to be done with it. Again a shake of the head. 
Better, indeed, were it to have gone farther than 
he had gone. 

He frowned, stared into the dark, and gave 
himself up to the images which came forth 
from it. 


II 

F IFTEEN of his thirty years vanished. He 
saw himself on a March afternoon of a year 
of the middle seventies, with tortured young 
shoulders holding, pointed into the loam of the 
southern Illinois prairie, a plow blade dragged 
by a pair of gray horses. He felt again the ache 
in his back, felt the rasp in his throat from 
vehement shouting at the team, felt the wind in 
his tousled, streaked hair, and the cool, moist 
earth into which sank his bare feet. He lost him¬ 
self in that former self, easily, as if no great cir¬ 
cumstance separated them. He stood, as he had 
then, motionless at the highest edge of the field, 
at the end of the last furrow but the one which 
would take him down again and to the gate, 
while his horses, forced no longer by the ejacu- 
lative lashing which had kept them tugging at 
the beam, stopped also, their necks sloping down, 
their fetlocks buried in the black soil. 

With deliberate slowness, this boy of fifteen 
years past lifted the reins from over his shoulders 
and knotted them about the plow-handles; and, 
leaving the blade embedded in the earth, he 
leaped to the uncut sod at the fieldside, pushed 
through a weedy hedge which separated the field 
from the weedier undergrowth beyond, and so on 
3 


4 QUEST 

to the top of the hill on the haunch of which he 
had been plowing. With a curtain of freshly- 
leaved scrub-oak cutting him off from what lay 
behind, he stood still and looked out over the 
prairie, parcelled regularly into fields, clean save 
where, swept up in clumps, trees huddled together 
on its wide lap, rolling limitlessly into the golden 
haze in which the sun was setting. His wander¬ 
ing eyes followed the smoke of the railway, which 
had been put through only a year before, bringing 
the county up-to-date. From a distant field he 
could see a man driving his team homeward. 

The boy raised his head and stretched his long 
arms exultantly. He had been disobedient and 
had received his reward. He had left untouched 
the field farther to the east which his father had 
commanded him to work, and he had worked the 
field behind him instead, all to the end that the 
close of the first day’s plowing might be spent on 
this spot. The place was his own. No one came 
to it or knew of it but he, and he cherished the 
secret of his love for it closely in his heart. Again 
he looked into the west. The clouds were just 
right. All fear of the reckoning he must make 
was dissipated. He would start on that other 
field in the morning—a day or two would make 
no difference to the corn which it was to raise. 

He walked a few steps to an ancient stump 
which commanded the outlook toward the sunset, 


QUEST 5 

and sat down, leaning back upon his hands and 
straightening the weary extent of his legs in front 
of him. Fondly he patted the stump, in the be¬ 
lief, unspoken because he did not wish to have 
it refuted, that his grandfather’s own ax had 
felled the vanished tree. And with the thought 
of his grandfather his fancy was off upon its 
travels. 

His grandfather he had loved before all men. 
He recalled his swarthy face, showing the darker 
for its border of white hair and beard, and his 
tall, broad, unbent frame. He had seen him 
cleave a log with miraculously few strokes and 
with a rifle bring down a prairie chicken on the 
wing. Now that he was gone, no marvel was too 
great to ascribe to him; but even in his life there 
had been about him much that was mysterious 
—no one knew whence he had come, and quite 
probably he did not know himself, for once, when 
the boy had asked him, he had only laughed and 
said he had been washed up by the river, full 
grown, with an ax in one hand and a bag of corn- 
meal in the other. He was as much a part of the 
country as were the forest he had cleared and the 
tough prairie sod he had cut. He had been on 
the expedition which had driven the lingering 
French from Peoria. He had been a friend of 
Ninian Edwards. He had seen Tecumseh. He 
was a hero. 


6 


QUEST 

His heart was thrilled as he felt of the stump. 
What a land for heroes this had been! He raised 
his eyes to the clouds and there, with war feathers 
trailing into the darkening sky, beheld the giant 
Black Hawk, against whose starving warriors his 
own father had fought, and beheld also, half en- 
wrapt in a cream-colored flag, the brave French¬ 
man La Salle, whose story his grandfather had 
told him. And amid other wisps of flag and 
smoke and cannon, a hundred men and horses 
tramped, recalling to him his Uncle David, whose 
namesake he was. The boy had never seen him 
—the soldier’s days were ended before his own 
were begun—but his mind dwelt often on his 
uncle. He had been a hero, he knew; and, he 
thought, as a scowl passed over his face, he 
should like to trade his father for him. The sky 
had changed, and he was reminded of the tales 
old men told of Clark and Montgomery and of 
how La Fayette once had come to Illinois. Then 
too, he could discern the figure of Lincoln, whose 
tomb he had visited with his mother when, one 
time long ago, they had spent a week with his 
aunt in Springfield. He knew that his father 
did not admire Lincoln, but for that matter, he 
did not much admire his father. 

Once more he scowled in vexation that his 
father should intrude upon his thoughts, He 


QUEST 7 

deserved no place among them; he was no hero; 
and the boy was not without suspicion that he 
was a coward. The only worth-while thing he 
had done was to fight against Black Hawk, and 
the boy loved Black Hawk far more than him. 

He did not find it unnatural that he should 
regard his father in this way. Neither did he 
remember from what his aversion had arisen, nor 
did he inquire why it should continue. Appar¬ 
ently it had always been with him. He accepted 
that, but he was disturbed to find that from 
whatever heights his dreams might take him, in 
the end his thoughts ever descended to this one 
visionless reality, as if the picture of what he 
aspired to be should never be clear to glow of its 
own colors but must always be tinctured by the 
fear of what he was determined not to be. 

He shook his head and stood again, looking 
over the prairie beyond him. Darkness was now 
creeping in around the horizon, so that only the 
clouds above the sunset remained light. In the 
fading golden haze where earth and sky were 
melted together, he felt a beckoning hand and 
could see the face of his grandfather. Perhaps it 
was that call which his three oldest brothers had 
answered; perhaps, some day, he too should fol¬ 
low it into the West. He remained standing 
where he was until the light was gone, and then 


8 QUEST 

pushed back through the undergrowth and across 
the hedge to the place where he had left his 
team. 


In impatient weariness, the horses had dragged 
the plow diagonally across the field, maiming his 
furrows, until they stood where the farther gate 
blocked their way. David ran after them, use¬ 
lessly shouting, and continued his berating while 
he drove into the adjoining field and unhitched 
the plow. Then, voice exhausted and temper 
softened, he led the team to the barnyard. 

The tiredness of the day was upon him. His 
dreams were gone, his exultation vanished. Un¬ 
brightened in memory, as he sat now in the of¬ 
fice brooding on these old things, was the fear¬ 
ful dusk with which the yard had been heavy. 
He stood with the horses at the trough, he saw 
again the yellow light creeping feebly from the 
kitchen window, the dimmer light in the barn 
door in which with ghostlike suddenness had ap¬ 
peared his brother Will. He recalled his broth¬ 
er’s disquieting words, and his galloping away in 
the darkness. Again he stood at the kitchen door 
with his ear placed closely against the unbat¬ 
tened boards, hearing nothing. He touched the 
latch and then withdrew his hand, He blew out 


QUEST 9 

the lantern and hung it on a peg nearby. The 
night was very dark. He replaced his finger on 
the latch, which he lifted with care not to make 
any noise, cautiously pushed back the door into 
the bare room, and, still unnoticed, stood where 
he was and looked about him. 

At one end of the room, beside the wide table, 
he saw his mother, with apron tied over a woolen 
dress of dark color, arranging the dishes for the 
evening meal. At the other stood his father, still 
in riding boots and long, black cloak, bent over 
the stove warming himself; and David felt in his 
naked legs a resentful shiver at his father’s boots. 

Between the two in the kitchen no word passed. 
His mother went quietly, unhurriedly about her 
work, moving from table to sideboard and back, 
not looking at all at his father. The latter stood 
impatiently clasping and unclasping his hands be¬ 
hind him and scraping his heavy soles upon the 
floor. His head was bent down. David could 
not see his face; but he knew his expression— 
worn and sullen, though with another element 
also, indescribable, which prevented him from 
hating him as he wished to, or from fearing him 
as he might, and made him pity him instead. 

Suddenly, out of the necessity of displaying his 
ill-humor, his father half-turned, and with a ges¬ 
ture of irritation and a voice dull and hard, de- 


IO 


QUEST 

manded, “What’s the matter to-night, Sarah? 
Why’s supper so late?” 

“I’ve told you,” Sarah replied, “I’ve been keep¬ 
ing things warm for Will and David.” 

The husband’s vexation swelled to the crack¬ 
ing point. “Will and David; always Will and 
David,” he said curling his lip. “I do believe 
that you care more for them than you do for 
me.” 

“Indeed, Thomas Bullard, it is true.” 

Thomas Bullard stamped the floor with his 
heavy boot, wheeled about, and took a step for¬ 
ward. Then his eye caught the boy in the door¬ 
way, and he balanced himself while he stared at 
him. 

“What are you standing there for? Come on 
in,” he growled with a commanding shake of his 
head. 

The voice of the father made the mother aware 
of the boy’s presence. She turned, glanced 
kindly, and shifted her eyes to her husband with 
a look full of meekness, but with enough con¬ 
tempt and authority commingled to make him 
halt where he stood and then, shrugging his 
shoulders, retreat to his former position by the 
stove. Sarah turned again to her son. 

“Hurry, Davie, and wash up. We’ve been 
waiting things for you.” 


11 


QUEST 

While she spoke she poured water from a 
pail into the wash basin and gave the boy soap 
and a towel. The father faced slowly around and 
gazed at the two. David averted his eyes, but he 
could feel the heavy gaze boring into him. He 
smiled, just a little, but he did not let his smile 
be seen. 

“Where’s Will?” the father asked sharply. 

“Will’s gone to town.” 

“Gone to town?” repeated the mother. “And 
without his supper?” 

“Walked, I suppose?” 

“No.” 

“What horse did he take?” the father pressed. 

“Belle.” 

“You know, Thomas,” the mother interposed, 
“there’s no other riding horse left.” 

A taunt in her voice chafed the sufficient wound 
of her interruption. Bullard lowered his brows, 
breathed unevenly, and spread his shoulders. “I 
forbade him to go,” he roared, “I forbade him 
ever to ride Belle! Sarah, you’ve— I’ll have 
no more of it, I say!” He grumbled inaudibly 
and, flinging off his cloak, strode with pounding 
heels across the room, seated himself at the table, 
placed one fist at his hip, and laid the other with 
obvious threat across his thigh. “Boy, fetch me 
my slippers,” he commanded. 


12 


QUEST 

Their eyes met. David hesitated and then 
obeyed. His father lifted one leg from the floor. 

“Here, pull it off.” 

David pulled off the one boot and then the 
other. 

“Put them there by the wood-box,” said his 
father with a wave of his head. 

Again the boy obeyed. 

Reassured in his authority, the father dragged 
his chair around, placed his feet under the table, 
and picked up his knife and fork. The mother 
brought the food from the stove to the table, 
served it herself, and sat down. For a while the 
three ate in silence, with eyes lowered. 

“Why were you so late, David?” the father 
asked abruptly. 

“I don’t know.” 

“What were you doing?” 

“Plowing.” 

“Where? In the east field, I suppose?” 

David shook his head. 

“Where then?” His eyes glowed; his lips 
seemed whetted. 

“In the one west.” 

The father pushed back his chair. 

“What? As if it weren’t enough for that hog 
Martin to cheat me out of that field without you 
plowing it for him. I’ll teach you to plow other 
men’s land!” 


QUEST 13 

He leapt up, almost falling backwards as he 
did so, and unclasped his leathern belt. David 
rose also and, with fists clenched to control the 
anger and rebellion which would have shaken 
his body, stood face to face with his father. 

“If you hit me, I’ll knock you down,” the boy 
threatened; and, for the moment, his cold, de¬ 
termined voice and his mountainous impudence 
balked and bewildered his father. The latter did 
not advance; but his eyes continued to glare, and 
his cheeks puffed with anger. His hands re¬ 
mained clasping the strap, though they did not 
move. 

“You whelp,” he growled, finally, and the 
growl brought the boy’s turn to quail. His eyes 
dropped before the greater size and strength of 
the other, and the habit of obedience broke his 
rebellion. He weakened, backed suddenly away, 
and fled toward the end of the room. 

At the instant of his turning, his father was 
upon him. A chair was interposed. The boy 
dodged; the father stumbled, then regained his 
balance, and, cursing, made for the door, to find 
there his path barred by his wife. She stood 
motionless, her two hands outstretched against 
the jambs, her face, pale and stern, uplifted to her 
husband’s. 

“You’ll not touch him, Thomas Bullard.” 

Bullard was stopped again, and his anger 


i 4 QUEST 

doubled by its second repulse. He seized his 
wife’s wrist. “Out of the way, or I’ll—” 

Sarah let her arm be taken, but remained un¬ 
moved. “You’ll not do that either,” she replied. 
“Go and sit down.” 

Bullard looked down at his wife; but his trem¬ 
bling lips, his red, puffing cheeks, and his blazing 
glance did not terrify her. He saw how relent¬ 
lessly her calm eyes regarded him. For a while, 
he stood where he was; and then he loosed her 
arm, ringed with the marks of his fingers, and 
walked back to the table. 

He dropped into his chair; his fist fell deadly 
upon the cloth; his chin sank on his chest. Sarah 
walked slowly after and stood at the opposite side 
of the table, silently, almost compassionately re¬ 
garding him. “Did you say you sold that west 
field, Tom?” she asked. 

Bullard’s eyes raised slowly, met hers, and 
dropped again. “I did, Sarah.” 

“Why did you sell that land?” she repeated; 
and in her voice was no longer anger or stern¬ 
ness, but only disappointment. 

Bullard shrugged his shoulders, but did not 
look up. 

“I had to, Sarah. We had no corn last year 
—you know that—and we kept our wheat too 
long. Martin was pressing me, hard. I had no 
money. I had to sell, Sarah; I couldn’t save it.” 


QUEST 15 

Sarah’s hands fell to her sides; and into her 
face crept the haggard lines of a despair, com¬ 
plete and crushing. She walked around to the 
front of her chair and sat down. With one hand 
she smoothed the checkered tablecloth. The 
other lay in her lap. 

“You know, Thomas, that bit of land was the 
last of the farm of your brother David, whom 
we named our own David after. You remember 
how it was your father’s wish that you always 
keep that farm together with this, the first he 
took up on the prairie, as a kind of monument 
to them both. And now you have let it go piece 
by piece until nothing is left.” 

She glanced up, but the appeal in her eyes was 
lost. Her husband’s head was bent down. He 
sat slouched with doglike immobility, not a finger 
changed since first he had taken his seat. Her 
head, too, bent down, and her lips parted for a 
sigh. For a long time no word was spoken. Then 
her heartbreak overwhelmed its bounds, and her 
voice rose up in the chant of her despair. 

“Your father, Thomas, moved up here to 
the open prairie, when other men clung tim¬ 
idly to the cleared land and dared not fol¬ 
low him. On this spot he built his first 
house, the one you were born in. With four 
oxen yoked together he broke the thick sod; and 
by great labor he fenced his fields, Ten miles he 


16 QUEST 

carted his wood for his buildings, his fuel, and 
his fences. He guarded his stock against wolves 
and fought the snows and the summer’s flies, that 
he might leave wealth for his children. Your 
mother, think of her too, bearing seven sons and 
three daughters here on the prairie with no doc¬ 
tor nor even a neighbor’s wife to help her, rais¬ 
ing them up, watching over them all and the 
wdiole farm together, alone on the long days 
when your father drove far to his market. 

“Of such a father and of such a mother came! 
you. They are gone now, their lands separated, 
their children scattered. You only remain, and 
of the lands which were given you—enough to 
keep your sons forever and ever, all is spent but 
this little farm, which will hardly outlast you. 
Nothing will you leave to your sons. Three are 
gone now, we know not where; the other two 
you will drive after them. Your father’s name 
will cease to be heard in the country he founded.” 

Bullard straightened up. His hands clasped 
the arms of his chair, and he sat as if seeing a bad 
dream, or as if having been suddenly awakened 
from one. His sobered eyes were riveted on his 
wife. An expression of wonder and fear lay 
upon his opened lips. 

“It’s not true, Sarah. It can’t be true. All is 
not gone. We have this farm, my father’s own 
farm, and—our boys.” 


QUEST 17 

“Our boys,” repeated Sarah with a hard laugh. 
“Bring back John and Zack and Henry if you 
can. I’ve prayed my tongue dry that I might look 
on them again before I am dead, but they do not 
come. Keep Will from going as they did, if you 
can. Keep this farm, yes, your father’s own 
farm, if you can. I tell you that if David is here 
—and it shall take the last blood from my life 
if he is not—there will be not so much as the tools 
left to him.” 

Thomas Bullard lay back, his face toward the 
ceiling and his eyes closed. “You are right,” he 
spoke from his parched mouth. “Not so much as 
the tools will be left, not a plow, not an ax. But 
don’t reproach me, Sarah; even the best corn will 
burn in an August sun.” 

“You are not like that,” said Sarah, relentless 
in her sorrow. “You are the corn which in Sep¬ 
tember has not tasseled.” 

“You’re right. That’s what I am.” 

His head sank farther back, and his voice came 
like a child’s wailing in the dark, and then died 
away: “I am a failure, a hopeless, miserable, 
failure; drunken, shiftless, a failure.” 

For a time he lay thus. Then after Sarah had 
got up from her chair and put herself to collect¬ 
ing the supper dishes, he sat up a little and, 
slowly shaking his head, watched her movements. 

“I’ve done ill by you, I know,” he said, “I’m 


18 QUEST 

sorry for you.” He paused. “What shall I do, 
Sarah?” 

“Go to bed and get up in the morning and 
plow.” 

He staggered up, and with stiff joints walked 
unsteadily away from the table. At the door he 
stopped and looked around at his wife. 

“You will come?” he asked. 

An expression of weariness and indifference 
came into her face. She nodded her head and 
looked away from him. 

“Yes, when I have finished the work,” she 
replied. 

She took the apron from the back of her chair 
and tied it again about her waist. 


All this had David seen and heard from where 
he crouched beyond the door at which his father 
had been stopped. All this he saw as a man, with 
perspective unlengthened, except that he realized, 
as he could not have realized then, the bitter 
resignation of his mother’s last sentence and ges¬ 
ture. One other sentence, however, burned more 
strongly in his mind, from emphasis first marked 
later on that same boyhood night. 

He had awakened from an uneasy sleep. The 
room was black. From the house came no sound, 
nor from the out-of-doors, because it was the still- 


QUEST 19 

est of the seasons, when there were neither the 
winds of winter nor the locusts and the whippoor¬ 
wills of summer. In his mind’s eye he saw as 
plainly as, a few hours before, he had seen hiding 
behind the door of the kitchen, his father lying 
back in his chair with his face upturned to the 
ceiling. And through the night’s silence came 
the father’s words, “A failure, a hopeless, miser¬ 
able failure.” 

David had stopped his ears against the cry, 
but still he had heard it. He had tried to drive 
it away with thoughts of his grandfather, of his 
mother, of his plowing, of anything to which his 
frightened mind would turn; but the voice would 
not go. 

He had counted, sung to himself, repeated 
things he had read; but through all that one pic¬ 
ture remained and followed him into his sleep. 


Ill 


T HE words had haunted him on more nights 
than that one, and now, years after, as he 
mused in the dark office they rang in his 
mind with terrifying plainness. He tried to ban¬ 
ish them as he had upon their first return, but he 
could not more than he could then, except to 
exchange for them thoughts no pleasanter than 
they. His memory was loosed—even its tor¬ 
tures were respite from the more painful self¬ 
search he had thought to inflict on himself— 
and in the riot of recollection another night ap¬ 
peared for him to follow through, a night in 
winter, more than three years after the first. 

Again he was caught by the past. In the three 
years separating the points in his reverie, his 
father’s fortunes had varied; but the degrada¬ 
tion which he had inaugurated years before was 
beyond control by his influence or that of any 
temporary relief. To Thomas Bullard came the 
conviction that a curse was upon him. The soil 
soured beneath his plow, and, as he gathered 
the grain in the harvest, the smut sprang from his 
fingers. His lands were pared away; his stock 
disappeared from disease or from forced sale; his 
crops mocked him; his leaning, gaping barns, once 
gorged with the wealth of his father, cried out at 
20 


21 


QUEST 

his improvidence. In the summer of the third 
year, he had a quarrel of particular violence with 
his son Will; and Will in anger left home to fol¬ 
low his older brothers into the unknown West. 
For a month after, Bullard mourned his depart¬ 
ure in despondent silence and then his resentment 
grew against his remaining son for remaining to 
taunt his wretchedness. With the determination 
which was left him, he fought on vigorously in 
his futile way to keep his hold on what was left, 
aware of the black end before him; and all his 
struggling seemed only to bring him nearer to 
that end. 

In these years had David, already heavy in 
mind at the one certainty of his life, the doom of 
his parent, bent his youth to assuage that fate, 
at work more profitable than that which his 
father’s farm could offer. Each year with the 
ripening of summer he had come, as thresher- 
man’s helper, to follow the harvest from farm 
to farm with lumbering train of engine and sep¬ 
arator and supply wagons, and at the end of the 
harvest to work his way homeward at plowing 
and sowing of wheat, at corn picking and fodder 
cutting and other autumnal labors. On the par¬ 
ticular year which was now alive in his memory, 
the end of this arduous pilgrimage had found him 
parted from home by a little over thirty miles. 
No word had reached him during his four 


22 


QUEST 

months away; and the worry which ever lay close, 
keeping him the harder at his toiling out of fear 
of its torments, bestirred itself and him at the 
approach of idleness, so that he lost no time in 
beginning his return. 

Beneath the cold and heavy clouds of a De¬ 
cember afternoon, he began his journey, the most 
memorable of his life, in memory at once vivid 
and obscure, as had been the journey itself. He 
puzzled upon this. Then he sank back and let 
things be revived as they would—his impatience; 
his apprehension of snow; his horse eager-nos- 
triled; his hand, with loosened rein, resting on the 
laboring withers; the road reaching on and on, 
hill after hill, in race with the hoofs which beat 
upon its frozen dirt. Gaunt trees marked the 
sites of lonely farm groups; and the houses with 
black windows stared at him down the long road 
until, passing them, he quaked a little, and wished 
that the next ones would not stare so. On every 
side, billowing away unevenly into the horizon, 
lay the prairie, its summer beauty stripped from 
it—bearing no life, not even a foraging horse, 
seemingly despairing of life, hopeless, desolate. 

David’s heart was like the prairie; and, under 
the load of his worry and the premonitions which 
arose from it, felt all the weight of youth’s heavy 
gloom. His head was as dull as his heart was 
weighted down. He did not try to think, he 


QUEST 23 

hardly dared to think, but rode and rode; and his 
rhythmic rise and fall in the saddle beat him into 
numbness ever more complete. Night finding 
easy conquest beneath the low clouds came the 
sooner upon him; and with the night came the 
snow, at first uncertain and light, and then in bold 
flakes which hid from his view tree and barn and 
straw-stack and took the friendly sound of the 
hoof-beats from his ears. He was alone between 
earth and sky with two dimly perceived fence lines 
to guide him. 

The intermittent galloping of the horse was 
stopped by the coming of the snow; and David 
resigned himself to the delay he had feared. He 
tried to determine his position on the road. He 
knew that the village through which he had 
passed just before the storm struck him was 
about ten miles from the four-corners where he 
would turn east from the main road, and that be¬ 
yond the turn there were five miles more. The 
village, he decided, was now three miles behind, 
making twelve miles yet to ride, which he would 
hardly do in less than four hours. He pulled his 
cap down close above his ears and drew his chin 
deep into his muffler. Now and then he shook 
the snow from his shoulders. The horse’s mane 
and flanks were white. 

He relapsed once more into the comforting 
numbness of body and mind and rode on, vaguely 


24 QUEST 

dreaming in the manner of his sunset musings on 
his favorite hill-top, until, looking up, he saw, or 
thought he saw, another horseman, white with 
snow as himself, coming abreast of him. To 
David in reflection there had oftentimes come 
doubt of the reality of this lank, mufflered com¬ 
panion whose approach had been silenced by the 
snow—doubt which had arisen almost at their 
separation an hour or so later. To one as imag¬ 
inative and superstitious as he knew himself to 
be, and strove to keep from being, and as lonely 
as he had been that night, such an apparition 
s would have been easy of invention; and the 
character of the figure, resembling more than 
faintly the ever-present image of his grandfather, 
made the likelihood of invention more plausible. 
The firmness of the impression, on the other 
hand, and the strangeness to him of the stranger’s 
words—far beyond thoughts which normally he 
could have granted to himself—argued for real¬ 
ity; and, in unconscious lapse into superstition, he 
had come to regard it as such. 

Remarkable as these words of the stranger 
were granted to have been, they were, however, 
more dim than anything in his memory. He puz¬ 
zled again, straining after recollection, for the 
old man had assumed a significant place in his life, 
as a sort of masculine, prairie-grown Nemesis 


QUEST 25 

whose persistence in his mind he could not alto¬ 
gether explain. 

A few things were clear. David had spoken 
impulsively of his desire to be a hero like his 
grandfather, had spoken out, unreserved and un¬ 
afraid, as he would not have dared to admit to a 
chiding elder; but the old man had not chidden. 
There were words of approbation and of sugges¬ 
tion, embroidered words characteristic of the 
prairie preachers whom often he had heard with 
his mother, with trite allusions comparing life to 
the storm in which they were riding, sentences then 
vaguely heard and repeated now without thought 
of meaning; but, now as then, he felt the exalta¬ 
tion with which they had filled him, felt his own 
earnestness and determination, and an apprehen¬ 
siveness which grew to be the strongest feeling 
of any. Little else he remembered save what was 
spoken at the four-corners at which they had 
parted. David repeated his resolution; the 
stranger called to him: “Forget not; yet you will 
forget, or do what is worse than forgetting.” 
Then another sentence, the most uncertain of any, 
a promise, more like warning, he thought, to keep 
him from forgetting; and that was all. 


So much had there been of the old man. His 


26 QUEST 

last words had been bewildering, terrifying from 
their obscurity; and David had felt the first shock 
of unreality. Grasping the cantle of his saddle, 
he twisted himself around. Far back at the cross¬ 
roads it seemed he could perceive through the 
falling snow the form of man and horse, but he 
could not be sure. He laughed, felt a second 
flood of exaltation and enthusiasm, and rode on 
with mind unclouded. The snowfall gradually 
lessened until it ceased entirely; and after that 
the clouds broke, revealing a sky of icy stars and 
a moon which glistened over the transformed 
prairie, with barrenness softened and a new 
beauty given for that which winter had taken 
away. The air became colder. He felt his coat 
grow stiff upon his shoulders. 

His visions, with the clearing of the air, lost 
what mystic quality they had had for a practical- 
izing which was entered into with zest undimin¬ 
ished. He took stock of the lands which were 
still left to his father. He determined that their 
dwindling away should cease, and began to evolve 
schemes for building up the farm and augmenting 
its yield. His father’s methods must be changed 
—three years of threshing had shown him many 
things. And his plans grew until the empire of 
his grandfather was reunited. His father should 
not stop him; nothing should stop him. In spite 
of the tracklessness of the night, he felt less 


QUEST 2 7 

lonely than he had when galloping between the 
desecrated fields of the afternoon. It was too 
cold to whistle, but he hummed to himself as he 
came ever more frequently upon houses he knew 
and things which were familiar in the twists of 
the road and the contours of the hills. And then 
came the night’s second adventure. 

His wandering eyes glancing downward found 
in the snow beside him the foot-marks of a man. 
When he first noticed them, they were more than 
half-filled; but, as recording the dying away of the 
storm, they grew in plainness until in the moon¬ 
light David could discern the frozen imprint of 
the heel. Upon making his discovery, he was a 
little vexed to admit that he was not the first to 
break the new snow; but his curiosity overcame 
his disappointment, and he followed the tracks 
with all interest. He thought it likely that by 
pressing forward he might come on another 
strange companion, since the traveler had evi¬ 
dently preceded him by only a short interval of 
time. His curiosity was further whetted by the 
appearance that the tracks were those of a man 
uncertain or lost in his way. Several times he 
passed wider markings where the walker had 
stopped and looked back as if in contemplation 
of his course; and once he came upon a triple 
path of some length where he had twice doubled 
back upon himself, continuing onward in his first 


28 QUEST 

direction. Finally, as he came by a black wood 
in the bowl of a valley, made the blacker by a 
border of moonlit white, the tracks suddenly 
turned to the side of the road and vanished. 

Prompted by his now keen interest and his all 
too keen imagination, he reined his horse to fol¬ 
low the trail into the thicket; but he discredited 
his imaginings, and, letting himself be controlled 
by prudence and by his impatience to be home, he 
kept to the road. 

The rest of that remembered night now swept 
through his mind in a whirl which he had no 
desire to slacken—the short distance to the 
house; his mother’s tender, pathetic greeting; her 
fears at his father’s absence since morning; his 
own stifled suspicions; his vain attempts to still 
hers. He listened to the long tale of the farm’s 
wretchedness, the failure of the corn, the aggres¬ 
sions of their neighbor Martin, the meeting with 
whom had been the occasion of the elder Bullard’s 
day in town. She was worried—his humor was 
not the brightest when he had left; he was angry, 
disconsolate; something, anything, might have 
happened. 

Morning—his father still away, and the neigh¬ 
borhood search which followed. His throwing 
the others off the clue which his cold fear told 


QUEST 29 

him would lead aright; his return to the tracks 
of the night before and the search through the 
brush till he reached the end, the frozen body 
he knew he should find. 

Yet two more days a blur of motion, a bur¬ 
den of fatiguing effort; long rides through the 
snow for minister, for neighbors, for help readily 
given; night without sleep; tearless, mournful 
watching; endless doing of uncommon labors. At 
last, with the return in the dusk from the grave¬ 
yard, all was ended. David helped his mother 
into the kitchen and returned to unharness the 
horse and to do his customary chores. At one 
time he paused, with fork poised, to smile in the 
realization that he was doing a usual, a familiar 
thing. Then he was forcefully struck with the 
thought that through all the horror of the past 
two days he had been doing unconsciously these 
usual, familiar things, but that in a little time 
longer he would cease doing them forever. He 
rested against the boards of the stall partition and 
listened to the sound of the horse nosing the ha y/ 
How pleasant the sound was, he thought with a 
faltering smile; how many nights he had heard it; 
and yet how soon he would hear it no more. His 
eyes dwelt upon the soft dark of the rafters; and 
his heart beat stilly in its vast emptiness. 

He saw that with his father had been buried 
every association which had made up his life* 


3 o QUEST 

every tie that held him to this parcel of land 
rather than to another. The farm was gone and 
all that grew or was built thereon. What his 
grandfather had won from the uncut prairie 
would pass into alien hands. His brothers were 
scattered without trace. His mother would go to 
live with his uncle. He was homeless, free, foot¬ 
loose, his plans destroyed at their inception, his 
dreams stopped before he could move to realize 
them. He laughed at his hope of being a hero. 
He could be nothing now but a wanderer. 

His mind caught a vision of wide plains flecked 
with drifting cloud shadows, of fields green and 
yellow, of cities sending their smoke into the air, 
of movement, expansion, restless building; but he 
was not quickened by it, yet, or caught, but fright¬ 
ened by its greatness, by its cold threat to his 
dreams. He turned to the old man of his home¬ 
ward ride and tried to recall what it was that had 
given him the inspiration he had felt in his words. 
But already the words did not return; perhaps, 
the old man had not said anything after all, 
though, surely, life was now enough like riding 
in a storm. He could not see whither he was 
going nor what lay in his road. He did not know 
even where it was he wished to go; he knew only 
what he wished to avoid. His father’s life should 
not be repeated in his own. 

He stopped his musing, pushed himself away 


QUEST 31 

from the wall and went on laying out the horse’s 
bed. He finished the work in the barn, closed the 
barn door, and walked toward the house. From 
across the fields he heard the whistling of a train 
as it approached the crossing—a call which he 
had no choice but to answer, and one that told 
him only that it was taking him away. He 
stopped and stood for a while looking into the 
brilliant night sky. Then he shook his head and 
walked on to the house. 

A conversation with his mother on the night 
before they had parted came to his mind. “Isn’t 
your heart a bit stirred,” she had said, “at going 
where all is new and strange and youthful as 
yourself—there’s hardly a city among them that’s 
older than I am. Doesn’t your mind forget these 
dead and worn-out things at the thought of the 
world which will grow up with you just as it was 
born with me?” 

He had shaken his head then. But, a month 
after, the thought had taken him in thrall, and 
that world into which he was transported became 
a reality more alluring than any vision, a phan¬ 
tasmagoria in which engines and parts of en¬ 
gines, men, smoke, steam, iron, and all the grimy 
attributes of industrialism appeared shrouded in 
the trappings of an eastern tale. That world had 
become his with a kinship not less close than that 
he had with the land. All the painfulness of 


32 QUEST 

recollection was soothed while he thought of the 
days he had borne the imposing title of Traveling 
Machine Expert. Every county of Illinois, Iowa, 
Missouri, he had seen; he had penetrated even to 
the yellow plains of the Dakotas; he had walked 
the streets of the cities he had dreamed of and 
had found them surpassing his dream. He 
had heard the roar of pneumatic hammers and 
the shrieking of whistles; had beheld with won¬ 
der the smoke of a thousand stacks pouring into 
the sky, obscuring the sun and blackening the 
earth. 

That world had become his; its energy was his, 
and like his, boundless beyond the need for con¬ 
servation; the power it manifested was the power 
he wished to attain. The sordidness, the grim¬ 
iness, the ruthlessness of his world were lost in 
its beauty, for the belching of smoke, the cease¬ 
less hammering, the silent whirl of the fly-wheel 
were all beautiful, exceeding, outshining, banish¬ 
ing all other aspects. He stood in the fields as 
he stood in the cities, glorying in the smoke which 
his own engine raised, in the strength of the long, 
twisting drive-belt, in the voluminous- spouting of 
the wind-stacker. 


Then he caught himself, and even these 
thoughts became painful, filling him with uneasi- 


QUEST 33 

ness, restlessness, apprehension. The circle of his 
meditations had brought him back to his desk in 
the dark office. He was a little comforted at 
finding himself safely enfolded again by what was 
familiar, but only a little, since he was resolutely 
not through with his thinking. And all thinking 
was painful, more painful even than those dark 
familiarities in which he found refuge. 


IV 


H IS brows bore painfully down while he 
tried to discover why all these things 
should continue to torment him so, why he 
could not escape from them. He sighed, like one 
who, in exhausting chase, sees again his pursuers 
and struggles onward with forced breath. 

Determinedly he brushed aside all with his 
hand. An end to reflection which came to 
nothing, brought him nothing! Yet again the 
one thought—thirty years old—the past upon 
him still, with aspect still terrifying; the vague 
hopes of youth still formless and unrealized; the 
uncertainty of his youthful prospect present as 
then, its treacherousness undiminished. His pre¬ 
dicament grew black to match the night in which 
he sat; and in the blackness he groaned and 
clasped his hands in a prayerful gesture that day¬ 
light would have shamed him in making. 

He looked upon himself—miserably stranded, 
a collection agent—a vile title, it seemed to him 
—traveling about Illinois and Iowa and Missouri 
for the company whose engines first he had driven 
—bound about with bills and notes and quibbles 
for which he had no taste, independent in the 
branch office, yet not independent, separated from 
his loved machinery—a sad deprivation to him 
34 


QUEST 35 

in whose hand a pen was ever unfriendly. He 
saw his cheapness, his lack of substance, his lack 
of everything he had dreamed of being at thirty. 

He found no amusement at all in the spectacle 
of himself thus unfolded. He was in a hole; he 
was getting nowhere. These memories, these 
bad dreams kept dogging his steps. In the illu¬ 
sions which beset him, he could see himself only 
as drifting, drifting without goal, drifting with 
the ghost of his father. His heart ached for 
security and certitude, for some feeling of having 
arrived, as the tired feet of one who treads a 
marsh ache for firm ground. 

His moist hand touched the pieces of the let¬ 
ter which lay arranged on the table. 

Coming into the office that evening, as was his 
custom on lonely evenings, to do work which might 
reasonably have been deferred till morning, his 
downcast eyes had caught on the hall floor an 
envelope, fallen from the janitor’s basket. With 
a thoughtless gesture, he had picked it up, torn 
it in two, and gone into the office. There, as 
thoughtlessly, he had opened his hand to see what 
it was he had found; and, with this, thoughtless¬ 
ness had ceased. The letter was confidential, 
from the home office to the local manager, full 
of complaint—the pre-harvest sales had been dis- 


36 QUEST 

appointing; the expenses of the office were too 
high; and so on, piling dissatisfaction endlessly. 

Back, as he was, at the starting point of the 
ruminations on which the letter had started him, 
David found it served him easily in his despera¬ 
tion. Guiltily he struck a match to the fragments 
and watched them burn in the basket; but guilt 
faded soon. Soberly he recognized the discovery 
of the solution he had craved. He would be 
branch manager himself; would see that the 
transference of authority was made with no more 
delay. 

He considered the matter with his usual direct¬ 
ness. It was obvious that the office was ineffi¬ 
cient. His mind, till then closed by months of 
friendship with Newton, the manager, was 
opened to the shiftlessness, the sluggishness of 
Newton’s methods; and his plan of action was 
laid forthwith. In the season which the year was 
entering—with the harvest past and the need of 
machinery least pressing—Newton could do lit¬ 
tle, while his own work of collecting on old sales 
would be at its height. He would appear at his 
best while Newton showed at his worst, and, 
bearing that advantage, could with expectation of 
success, press the claim he had assumed. 

David paused, touched by an uncertain qualm. 
It was an ungrateful way to treat Newton. New¬ 
ton had been generous to him, kind—more than 


QUEST 37 

passing kind. Newton could not help but suffer. 
Moreover, there was Grace, Newton’s daugh¬ 
ter. That would be awkward, unpleasant. He 
scored himself for his entanglements, or near 
entanglements, and then shook his head and ban¬ 
ished his qualms. He was sorry it had to be 
Newton; but Newton had had his chance—would 
still have a chance if he cared to fight for it. The 
rest could go. 

One thing was necessary, to get ahead. Con¬ 
cerning the element of ferocity which lay in this 
process of getting ahead, David was neither star¬ 
tled nor especially impressed, perhaps because he 
did not see it, though more likely because, his life 
never having been free from that element, he was 
not surprised to find it persisting now. Whatever 
the end, or whatever the hazards of the way, 
there was nothing for him to do but go on; he 
must move, must have the sense of his moving. 
And there came slowly a callousness which 
armored his sensibilities as his boyhood’s bare 
feet had grown hardened to the pebbles which at 
first had bruised them. 

On the basis thus established, he set avidly 
to work. His relations with Newton became less 
intimate; and, although the guileless manager did 
what he could to forestall the coldness, David 
could make no response. His visits to Newton’s 
house became less and less frequent until, at the 


38 QUEST 

end of summer, near the time when Grace was 
to go back to her seminary, they had ceased alto¬ 
gether. David offered no explanation, and, for 
himself needed none. He accepted the common¬ 
place that, when one moves rapidly ahead, there 
is much which one must leave behind, and scarcely 
perceived how one unsure, quivering emotion 
faded in the new ardor which spurred him. 

Never had he moved so rapidly that life lost 
all its color in the blur of his motion; never had 
he been so driven as this, that he had no vacant 
moment in which to look behind him. Yet he did 
not need to look back to know what was there 
—his vague dread, his father. What it all was 
that made up this feeling he had never attempted 
to analyze. It was more than the example of his 
father, whose end he could not likely repeat, 
something more too than the grayness of a boy¬ 
hood spent amid decline. But feeling uneasy 
with abstractions, he would deal only with what 
his senses could touch for him; he must have 
symbols, personifications; and so his father served 
to embody what he would not try to explain. 


In November he made his journey to the fac¬ 
tory, deviating, on the way toward Indiana, far 
enough from the route of greatest directness to 
visit a friend, Henry Crosby, an implement dealer 


QUEST 39 

in the town of Allenville, and a personage of 
weight in that community. David laid his plans be¬ 
fore Crosby, and Crosby smilingly approved, beg¬ 
ging him to stay a few days against a hoped-for 
visit from his wife’s sister, of whom often he spoke 
to the young man. But David with heart lately 
quenched, and with all intent to keep it from 
interfering again, had no time for such delays, 
and went on to the factory. 

Immediately at his return, he set to work with 
application as great as before, though not too 
great to prevent him from noticing, as months 
went by, how disquieted Newton became. There 
were spasmodic efforts to change, but without 
avail; and the off-season was at best a hard one 
in which to show reform. Newton, with bewil¬ 
dered eyes, mutely beseeched David for help in 
his trouble; but David did not encourage his con¬ 
fidences. 

March brought another journey to the factory, 
the end of which sent David hurrying toward 
Allenville with assurances-he could not keep from 
Crosby, his friend. He was satisfied with the 
result he had achieved. He felt also an unadmit¬ 
ted satisfaction from having completed an effort 
best done with quickly; but, more than any of this, 
it was the joy in the future, liberated as now he 
saw it, which warmed all his thoughts and stirred 
his impulses. 


y 


I N order to get to the town of Allenville, 
it was necessary to change at the town of 
Sullivan from a train running westerly to one 
running southeasterly, the latter appearing but 
once a day, late in the morning. Recklessly laps¬ 
ing from his usually careful foreplanning, David 
arrived in Sullivan a few hours after the south¬ 
easterly train had departed. He was ill-disposed 
to wait until the next morning. There was no 
business in Sullivan with which he could beguile 
his conscience; there was the twelve miles which 
separated him from his destination mocking him 
with its shortness; there was the spring of the 
year which, despite his preoccupation, he felt as 
a spur to his natural impatience; there was, be¬ 
yond all, his desire to impart his news to Crosby. 
In his eagerness, waiting was unendurable. He 
determined not to wait. 

At the livery-stable, arrangements for the trip 
were quickly made—three dollars for horses and 
driver, a price exorbitant enough; but David, 
with a restive gesture, at once ordered the team 
to be harnessed to a buckboard. At the time 
when he set out, the afternoon had already passed 
the middle of its decline. The sky, gray in the 
uncertain threat of the most whimsical of sea- 
40 


QUEST 41 

sons, foretold, if nothing else, an early twilight. 
The clayey loam of the roads, reduced by rain 
and thaw to a state of sogginess attained only in 
that Illinois soil, made progress toilsome. The 
river lay ahead and beyond it four miles more of 
tedious mud; and the river, which unwisely had 
not been considered in the undertaking of a 
March journey, had carried away the bridge. 
The horses stopped at the barrier which had been 
built across the road. Three-quarters of the way 
stretched behind. 

David, wrathful at the nearness of his attain¬ 
ment and the hopelessness of his balk, stormed at 
the driver, unreasonable in his demand for a road 
with a bridge; but his anger brought no response 
until, with a threat to swim the horses, he suc¬ 
ceeded in disclosing the knowledge that a mile 
upstream lay a ford, little used, probably unsafe. 
On this he seized at once; and the horses were 
turned about and the quest for the second cross¬ 
ing begun. As once more they came in sight of 
the river, twilight was setting in. The road ran 
on a short distance and disappeared under the 
flooded water. 

The driver paused, grumbled a protest; but, 
without any change of expression, David nodded 
his desire to proceed, and the other obeyed. 
When they entered the stream, David raised his 
feet to the top of the dash-board and slung his 


42 QUEST 

bag by its narrow strap over his shoulder and 
then sat without word or further move, watch¬ 
ing the growing depth of the water, splashing now 
about the horses’ knees, now swimming over the 
hubs of the wheels, now washing the horses’ bel¬ 
lies. The liveryman turned to him sullenly, but 
David did not take note of his glance. Had turn¬ 
ing back in their perilous way been possible, he 
would not have consented to it. The depth of the 
ford became greater. 

Suddenly, lunging forward as if striking a 
hole where the roadway was washed out en¬ 
tirely, the team, unable longer to touch the river 
bottom, began to churn the water with their 
affrighted feet. The buckboard dragged behind, 
submerged except for the seat and sinking lower. 
With a command to relieve the weight in the 
wagon, David plunged forward to the back of 
the horse nearest him; but he had no more than 
taken his plunge when the animal, deceived again 
by the uncertain bottom, stumbled and fell be¬ 
neath the surface, tossing him to one side. He 
sank and rose again, his hat gone, his neck com¬ 
pressed by the strap of his bag. His companion 
he could not see. Furiously, the horses beat the 
water, so that foam streamed onward in the 
muddy current, but could make no headway. The 
buckboard was held fast, its seat, inclined to the 
rear at a sharp angle, barely showing. 


QUEST 43 

There followed the hazardous work of freeing 
the horses. Swimming from the side of the buck- 
board, David felt his way to the tree and, with 
the water splashing in his face, tugged at the har¬ 
ness. The outside trace was loosed. The second 
was more difficult to reach; but he reached it, and 
wrenched it off, and then was forced to throw 
himself backward in order to keep from being 
struck when the horse, treading wildly, swung 
around on a pivot at the head of the tongue, 
where yet it was held. Half swimming, half 
clutching to the jerking pole, David made his way 
ahead to the neck yoke, along which he stretched 
his arm until he found the catch which held the 
breast-strap to it. Once more he had to approach 
the churning feet and, once more successful in 
escaping them, he broke the fastener and felt 
the pull of the horse as it swam free. 

Holding tight to the strap, he lifted his head 
above the water and attempted to locate his com¬ 
panion, but saw only the other horse swimming 
upon him alone. His own horse was making for 
the shore dragging him relentlessly. His shoes 
were lead; his clothing hung heavily on him, mak¬ 
ing great the risk of swimming unaided. Never¬ 
theless, he dropped the strap to which he was 
clinging, and strove in the water between the 
horses until he found both reins, by which he 
could keep a meager control of the team and 


44 QUEST 

again obtain some support for himself. Chance 
favoring him in permitting the reins to be buckled 
together at the ends, he dove his head between 
them and caught them under his arms; and then, 
shaking the water and the wet hair from his eyes, 
he faced the place of the catastrophe and swam 
toward it in the slack which remained. A little 
way off he perceived the liveryman struggling 
with slow advance against the current. The reins 
began to pull tight across David’s chest, but, with 
arm extended, he put his strength into a final 
lunge forward. The distance was spanned; his 
hand touched the driver’s, and clasped it. 

David relaxed, trusting in the reins to bring 
him to land and exerting his free arm no more 
than was needed to keep his face above the water. 
He turned his eyes and caught a glimpse of the 
darkening shore—endlessly far away. The 
weight of the man on his outstretched arm pulled 
sorely. The hold of the strap beneath his arms 
pained him more. His bag, still tied to his neck, 
floated behind him. 

At length the horses, feeling the sand rise to 
their hoofs, swam no more. David let his own 
feet down, shook loose his hand, leaving the 
driver to shift for himself, and ran through the 
water till he had caught both bridles. At the 
river’s edge one horse attempted to rear and the 
other jerked its head and both violently shook 


their sides; but he held fast to the bit rings and 
submitted to the shower which could not add to 
his drenching. The liveryman came ashore close 
behind him. 

David saw that his companion was limping 
badly and learned of a less happy struggle with 
the harness than his had been. There swept upon 
him a sense of guilt in forcing the accident and 
the hurt thus following upon it; and, in humility, 
he stood willing to suffer the blame or blows he 
thought deserving. But the driver only praised 
him as his savior and increased the shame for 
which there could be no visible penance. His 
spirit became overcast. 


Through the dusk which gathered all the land¬ 
scape into it, they saw a low, unlighted house, a 
little way upstream; and to this, with clothes 
coldly clasping their bodies, they trudged along 
the uneven bank, leading the restive horses. The 
appearance of the house became more desolate 
as they approached. Rank weeds, tarnished with 
the gray of winter, climbed to its blank windows. 
Its boards, dry, cracked, paintless, strained at 
their supports; its corners leaned from perpendic¬ 
ular; its shingles were black and loosened. A 
worn broom and a square-bladed spade reposing 
against the wall close by the door were the only 


46 QUEST 

marks of an inhabitant. The liveryman held the 
team while David walked to the door. He 
knocked, but there was no answer; he tried the 
door, and it opened without difficulty; he called, 
and his voice rang hollow through the empty 
rooms. 

He turned to his companion. 

“Being as there’s nobody to invite us, I guess 
we might as well stay anyway,” suggested the 
liveryman. 

Together they walked a little way back of the 
house to an open shed with several stalls. They 
removed the harness, except for the bridles, which 
they unbitted, and tied the horses to the feed- 
boxes. In one corner they found a pile of mingled 
straw and hay and in the other some old sacking. 
The hay they doled into the mangers, and with 
the sacks they rubbed down the sleek, wet flanks 
of the animals. Then they returned to the house. 

The inside was not less forlorn than the out. 
Shivering as both were from exposure, the survey 
which they made of their desolate refuge was 
cursory; but greater thoroughness would have 
found little more. A bed covered with a patch- 
work quilt, which they noticed in an adjoining 
room, strengthened the assumption that the house 
had an occupant, as did the absence of accumu¬ 
lated dust and cobwebs; the meagerness of the 
furnishings and the abjectness of the surround- 


QUEST 47 

ings told only that this probable occupant was 
poor. At one side of the dark room into which 
first they had entered was an open fireplace, on 
the hearth of which they found wood already laid. 
David also found matches, and lighted the fire. 

“I’m going to strip,” the liveryman announced. 

“What if whoever owns this place should come 
back?” asked David. 

“That would be awkward, I guess, but no 
worse than losing your teeth from chattering the 
way I’m like to do.” 

David laughed, finding his reason conclusive; 
and without further discussion, they removed 
their clothes, wrung them out, indifferent to the 
pools of water which were formed on the floor in 
front of the hearth, and draped them over the 
two chairs, which they drew close to the fire, all 
their movements grotesqued by gaunt shadows on 
walls and ceiling. They turned themselves around 
and around before the blaze until they were 
equally toasted on all sides and rubbed and 
slapped their skins until the chill of their duck¬ 
ing and the stiffness of their sudden baking were 
alike gone from them. On the top of a chest 
which the flames had revealed the liveryman dis¬ 
covered a blanket. He hobbled to it, vigorously 
shook it open, and inspected it by the light of the 
fire. David frowned and again made inquiry 
about his lameness. 


48 QUEST 

“Oh, I guess it’s all right,” the liveryman re¬ 
marked glumly, “but I’ve got to do something 
to forget supper.” He lay down in the shadow 
a little way from the fireplace and had no more 
than ceased to adjust himself in the folds of the 
blanket than he gave sonorous proof that his wish 
was attained. 

David added a log to the fire, and danced for 
a while solemnly in front of it to keep any linger¬ 
ing chill from settling in his joints. Then he 
thought of his bag and, hastily opening it, found 
that its oil-cloth lining was more trustworthy than 
he had dared to expect. He put on dry under¬ 
clothes and socks, arranged his garments and the 
liveryman’s together on one chair, and sat down 
in the other. He stretched his toes as closely to 
the burning logs as the heat would let him and 
frowned distraughtly at the flames. 

The driver’s injury, though not serious, judged 
from the care given it, hung in his mind neverthe¬ 
less, as did also the thought of the risk which he 
had forced him to undergo. He tried to make 
himself believe that it was well taken—that the 
gain he desired had justified it, that even now 
there was sufficient gain, since he could still get to 
Allenville before the morrow’s train. But such 
attempts were futile. His joy had grown hollow, 
his hurry without reason, his gain unworthy, his 
news bereft of its savor. He sat and looked into 


QUEST 49 

the fire and listened to the driver’s lumbering 
breathing. Presently he reached for his bag 
again and opened it and fingered his papers. 
Then his hand dropped, and again he stared 
darkly at the fire. His eyelids grew leaden. 

For a long time, it seemed, he had sat thus, 
when he felt the presence of a third person in the 
room. He looked cautiously over his shoulder 
and beheld standing at the door through which 
they had entered a tall, gray-bearded man whose 
features were indistinct in the dull light of the 
fire. The man stood motionless, resting against 
the wall in posture so comfortably shaped by 
lapse of time that David could have believed he 
had been there the whole evening, to be drawn 
into life by the wavering glow which had driven 
the shadows from him. 

In his surprise, David closed his bag, pushed 
it tightly beneath his elbow, and moved to get 
to his feet. He clutched the bag, finding it sud¬ 
denly of great value, and felt that he must protect 
it. The old man, however, raised his arm in a 
gesture of placation and laughed strangely, seeing 
his fear; and with the laugh, David received a 
feeling of repulsion as sudden as had been the 
contrary, and dropped the worthless bag on a 
chair. Then he explained the reason for his pres¬ 
ence in the cabin, and, while he talked, the old 
man brought corn-bread from the cupboard and 


So QUEST 

heated coffee; and, while he ate, feeling his angry 
hunger unabated, the host, with his strange, un¬ 
forgettable laugh, undertook to explain the 
reason for the accident. 

Years before, he told, he had kept a ford at 
that point in the river—had kept it well, except 
in high water, when he had used a ferry—the 
only way to handle a river like that one. But men 
from Sullivan had built a bridge and robbed him 
of his living; and so, in revenge, he had sunk his 
ferry over the ford, destroying both and prevent¬ 
ing all crossing when the bridge was out—as 
nearly every spring it was. 

He laughed again and David shuddered and 
wondered why he should laugh. 

“Why shouldn’t I?” the old man demanded 
bitterly, “if it gives me any pleasure? By the 
time you have lost even the little I had to lose, 
you’ll see that there’s no pleasure or comfort 
that doesn’t come by cost, either your own or 
somebody else’s. You won’t bother much whether 
the reward is worth the cost. You’ll just take it 
as I do, and as you do too, whether you see it 
or not.” 

David said nothing. 

The old man’s eyes again became fixed on the 
bag, and David had an impulse to take it to him, 
not this time to protect it, but to hide it from 
sight, since resting in the old man’s stare it 


QUEST 51 

acquired a visible taint, as if the leather of its 
sides were rotting and peeling off. 

“What’s in that bag, tools?” the stranger 
asked. 

“No, papers,” David dismally replied. 

“A business man?” his host asked with sharp 
scorn. 

“Why, yes,” David replied awkwardly, “every¬ 
one is, I guess.” 

“Yes, I guess,” the ferryman repeated, shak¬ 
ing his head. “It used to be that you could tell 
something about a man by what he was. It meant 
something—some kind of tools. But now they’re 
all alike and have nothing to call themselves. 
A man can’t be decent without tools in his hands. 
You ought to have them in that bag instead of 
those papers. There’s no heart, no life in 
papers.” He paused. “You weren’t always a 
business man, were you?” 

“No, I was a farmer and then I was a me¬ 
chanic.” 

“You know tools, then. Are you always going 
to be a business man?” 

“I suppose so,” David answered, “I’ve just 
been made a branch manager.” 

“What did they do with the old manager, make 
him president?” 

“No, he loses out.” 

“Did you know him?” 


52 


QUEST 

“Yes, we worked together a long while.” 

The old man chuckled in contemptful satisfac¬ 
tion. “You see, it’s like I said. You didn’t 
care what it cost. You took it.” 

“No, it wasn’t that. He couldn’t do the 
work.” 

David felt the old man’s eyes burn into him. 

“So it was with me and my ferry. We couldn’t 
do the work. And so the bridge is built and I am 
left aside in this weed patch here. But the bridge 
gets washed out and doesn’t do the work either.” 

He rose abruptly from his chair and stood fac¬ 
ing him. “Get back to your tools,” he said, as if 
in command, and then went out of the room as if 
from a dream and did not reappear. David sat 
looking into the fire, and at length he fell asleep. 
But his sleep was fitful and haunted by broken 
bridges. 


CHAPTER VI 


W HEN, after dawn, he awoke, he found 
himself alone in the room. The fire was 
dead. The driver’s empty blanket lay 
twisted on the floor near the hearth. Of the fer¬ 
ryman there was no trace. Gone likewise were 
the coffee-pot and the pan of corn-bread which 
had ministered to his midnight hunger; and the 
cupboard into which he looked for them was 
vacant. He went into the second room, whither 
the old man had gone on leaving him, and dis¬ 
covered its bed untouched. He stood in the door¬ 
way, puzzled; and then he shook his head, and 
dressed, and went outside of the cabin. 

At the river bank he came upon the liveryman. 
“Look there,” the liveryman greeted him, 
pointing to the buckboard, now washed a little 
way down stream and stranded only half-sub- 
merged with the muddy current swirling through 
its spokes, “that was nice of her coming on this 
way, weren’t it?” 

“Have you seen anything of the crazy old man 
who owns this place?” David asked, ignoring his 
pleasure. 

The driver was not readily taken from his own 
preoccupation. “Crazy old man, did you say?” 
he queried, still intent on the selection of a path 
53 


54 QUEST 

to the wagon. “No. Haven’t seen anyone. 
Why?” 

“He came a little while after you went to sleep. 
I thought maybe you’d met him this morning be¬ 
fore he went away.” 

“There’s been nobody about since I got up,” 
the driver assured him. 

Again David was puzzled. “Never mind,” he 
said indifferently, avoiding the other’s shrewd 
glance. “Let me help you haul the wagon in.” 

After the buckboard had been brought to 
shore, he left the driver to make his repairs and 
mend his harness and get back the best way he 
could, proceeding onward himself along the road 
to Allenville. 

In the sky which embowled the prairie was van¬ 
ishing the gauzy haze of the March dawn. The 
air was refreshingly chill. The roadside, where 
he walked, was elastic under his feet, sending him 
the more easily forward. He began to whistle in 
the rhythm of his stride, and then his whistle per¬ 
ished unnoticed. Looking across the prairie, he 
smiled, as would a child uncertain in fear. The 
lightness of the earth was not in his feet, nor the 
freshness of the day in his mind. 

The thoughts which had troubled his sleep be¬ 
came the more disturbing from the likelihood of 
their having been only thoughts—much happier 
would he have felt had the driver, too, seen their 


QUEST 55 

host. Then he wondered whether the old man 
had existed outside a dream. Bethinking a 
resemblance to that other old man he had met on 
a winter’s night long ago, he wondered whether 
the two might be the same; and then he ques¬ 
tioned whether either had existed. He frowned, 
since he did not care to dwell on these things; and 
new thoughts came as new trees stretched into 
sight from successive valleys. The very tangible 
blame he had felt toward the driver spread 
vaguely to a more pervasive feeling of general 
guilt. A consciousness of wrong in his way of 
gaining the managership grew in him—bewil¬ 
dered him, because he could see no alternative 
from what he had done. He was troubled never¬ 
theless. “Get back to your tools,” he mumbled, 
feeling much virtue in the slogan; but from his 
tools he seemed only to be getting farther and 
farther away. 

As he walked, suddenly he became aware of the 
difference in his heart on this morning from on 
the morning before, at the outset of his journey. 
The joy which had filled him was gone; the very 
existence of his friend seemed not to matter. He 
laughed at the heat with which he walked, with¬ 
out reason now; but he did not turn back or 
slacken his pace. Since the hour was early and 
the roads were bad, he met few persons; but those 


S 6 QUEST 

few he did pass were not deterred by his dishev- 
elment from greeting him as the spring morning 
urged them. David was seized with an aversion 
to this custom which always before had seemed 
natural enough. He wished no good mornings, 
could not reply, felt the more desolate for these 
interruptions to his brooding march. 

He strode on, till at length the road for a short 
distance along its angling toward the Indiana bor¬ 
der was transformed into the main street of the 
village of Allenville, and for its scraggly edges was 
given parallel brick or cinder walks lined with sin¬ 
gle-storied buildings of trade. Prominent among 
these, by reason of an unadorned wooden sign 
which hung far out over the pavement, was the 
store of Henry Crosby, 

Dealer in Farm Machinery, Wagons, 
and Grain 

and to this David made his way. 

The proprietor was discovered in the business 
of sweeping out his establishment. Crosby was a 
tall man, growing plump and bald. His face was 
kindly, lacking in force; and one might have sup¬ 
posed him to be easy-going, were not that supposi¬ 
tion belied by his sweeping, at which he went as 


QUEST 57 

intently as he would have at the selling of a trao 
tor or at the dabbling in the Chicago grain market 
to which he was addicted. On catching sight of 
the hatless, bespattered visitor, he tossed away 
his broom and, with hand extended, walked rap¬ 
idly to the door. 

“Well, Bullard, a fine hobo, you are,” he cried. 
“What brought you in this ungodly manner?” 

David faltered, smiling pointlessly, and then 
mentioned the accident in the river and told of 
the manner in which he had been forced to spend 
the night—not mentioning the dubious ferryman. 
To this he added merely, “I had a little business 
with Thompson’s bank, and, besides, I wanted to 
tell you that when I get back I’ll be manager.” 

Crosby, overjoyed at this last, perceiving noth¬ 
ing which the words had not conveyed, plied 
David with questions about his trip, about the 
factory, about the office, to all of which David 
replied shortly, for his enthusiasm was dead. But 
his reticence his friend mistook for modesty and 
beheld the young man’s virtues to shine more 
brightly. David felt the deception and grew con¬ 
fused at his inability to avoid it. 

Affectionately Crosby feasted on David’s face. 
His dull cheeks colored and his smile broadly 
spread. “You couldn’t have come at a better 
time,” he said, warmly pressing David’s shoulder, 


58 QUEST 

“and now that you’re caught, you’ll not get away 
as easily as you did before. We’ve got a surprise 
for you up at the house.” 

“What is it, another baby?” 

“No,” Crosby dismissed the possibility with a 
quick shake of his head, “I’d have written you 
about that.” 

“What, then?” David’s fettered mind had run 
at once the limit of answers. 

“You ought to guess. Bess will show you. 
Run on up there now. I’ll see you at lunch time.” 

David slung his bag over his shoulder and fol¬ 
lowed the familiar way to his friend’s house, a 
two-storied frame structure, painted yellow and 
white and adorned in profusion with jig-saw 
scrolls and brackets. Awakened as he had been 
by his friend to the disorder of his clothing—one 
thing which till then had not bothered him—he 
walked around the house to seek admittance by 
the rear door. 

He knocked and waited and saw the door 
partly opened by an unknown young woman, who 
faced him with unsympathetic defiance. He hesi¬ 
tated, in his mind trying to account for her, and 
wondering how he should persuade her to let him 
pass. He did not judge separately of her features, 
excepting her eyes, which shone unfriendly upon 
him; but he received a dazed impression of clear 
skin, firm lips, of spirit, of resolution, all of which 


QUEST 59 

balked him the more. He blushed and started to 
explain himself. 

The girl, however, was quicker than he. Her 
dark blue eyes shot from his uncombed hair to 
his muddy shoes, catching on the way the suspi¬ 
cious bag which hung from his shoulder. “We’re 
wanting no peddlers here,” she said decisively, 
and closed the door in his face. 

David gazed blankly at the door, frowned, 
coughed. This was probably the surprise Henry 
had mentioned, he concluded. Slowly he climbed 
down from the stoop, walked back to the front 
of the house, and ascended to the wide porch only 
to see again before him, in the glazed door panel, 
the same unknown, defiant eyes, and to hear the 
click of the key in the lock. 

His resources grew depleted. To make in¬ 
quiry at a neighbor’s house, besides inviting a 
similar rebuff, would complete his incrimination in 
the eyes of the firm guardian who withstood him. 
He could wait until noon. He could go back to 
the store. He could knock until his knuckles were 
bruised. He pondered for some time, in doubtful 
amusement, standing at the corner of the porch, 
and then he returned to the back yard, faced the 
house, and called loudly at the second story. 

“Oh, Bess!” 

His call brought a satisfying response. From 
a bedroom window was thrust the countenance, 


60 QUEST 

round, full-colored, enwreathed in yellow hair, of 
a woman entering middle age—the wife of 
Crosby. 

“Well, of all people!” she cried, recognizing 
the disreputable young man in the yard, and dis¬ 
appeared forthwith; and, in a time which was 
incredible, since her legs were short and her body 
more chunky than not, she stood in the wholly 
opened kitchen door. The young woman of the 
determined manner stood at her shoulder, taller 
than she and more slender, her face, with darker 
hair drawn simply back from it, still inquiring, 
with lingering defiance. 

“Well, David, you awful looking thing,” Bess 
exclaimed from the heart of her exclamatory na¬ 
ture, and took his hands with unmasked warmth. 
“Whatever have you been doing with yourself? 
You haven’t been hurt, or anything, have you? 
This is my sister, Edith Warren,” she remem¬ 
bered, bringing the girl forward by pressing her 
hand to her back. “You’ll like each other. Edith 
thought you were a peddler, but you really look 
much worse than that.” 

The girl opened her lips in annoyed dismay, 
but Bess crowded back her words as she drew 
David into the kitchen. “We’re so glad to see 
you. You know it’s almost five months since you’ve 
been here. Have you had your breakfast?” 

David said that he had; but his eyes and his 


QUEST 61 

thoughts were on the girl so that he heard not 
what he said. 

“Then we can sit here and talk a while—before 
I fix those awful clothes. You haven’t told us 
yet what it was that happened to you.” 

The three sat about the kitchen table. “There 
is nothing to tell. I was in a hurry,” David began 
haltingly, repeating what he had said to Crosby, 
“and when I found the bridge was out, I made 
the driver ford the river. About halfway across, 
we got stuck and had to cut the horses loose and 
swim to shore. There was an old cabin near by, 
so we spent the night there; and early this morn¬ 
ing I came on.” 

“But tell us about it,” Bess insisted. 

With some difficulty at first, she began to get 
details from him. Then David, becoming once 
more absorbed in the thought of his own effort, 
which was always absorbing to him, told freely, 
minutely—without noticing his betrayal—how he 
had struggled with the straps and dodged the 
horses’ feet, how, swimming unaided, he had 
found both reins and finally had caught hold of 
the driver. 

“Then you saved the driver’s life,” said Edith, 
satisfied with having got the pith of the story. 

David frowned as he caught a little of the 
emotion which escaped through her eyes. Again,, 
and more intensely, he felt the confusion which 


62 QUEST 

Henry’s willing deception had caused him. “No, 
no, I didn’t do anything,” he protested, but he 
could not show how false in his heart was all 
that seemed so obvious to them. 

“But you did,” Bess contradicted, supporting 
her sister; and he floundered pitiably for words 
which did not come. 

Later at luncheon, Bess asked of her husband, 
“Did David tell you how he saved a man’s life?” 
Crosby beamed at this unmentioned prodigy. 
“No, that’s a new one.” Bess repeated the story. 
“And did he say he’d been made manager?” 
Crosby asked, adding his story when she had fin¬ 
ished. Again Bess lauded him with her easy ex¬ 
travagance. David did not speak, but sat silently, 
scrutinizing his plate. He knew that Edith’s eyes 
were on him, intent, inquiring, and he could not 
meet them. 

At the end of the meal, Crosby ceremoniously 
folded his napkin and got up from the table. 
“You’re coming along?” he asked David. 

David found his voice with difficulty. “No, I 
think I’ll stay here,” he replied, “I want to go 
through my papers before I do anything else. If 
you see Thompson, you can say I’ll be in to call 
on him in the morning.” 


David went into the parlor, a dustless unused 


QUEST 63 

room, and sank into a haircloth chair near a win¬ 
dow, more tired than he would have been from 
a day’s work. He felt Edith’s eyes still upon him 
and could not find peace beneath her gaze. He 
knew she thought better of him than he deserved; 
he knew how little she would think of him if she 
understood truly all that had happened. He felt 
a sudden, poignant desire for that good opinion 
which she offered; he saw his faults—his wrong 
to Newton, his culpability toward the liveryman 
—grow with that opposite desire, torturing it, 
overwhelming it. He could not let her grant him 
what he was unworthy of receiving; he must make 
her know the truth about him. Yet he did not 
want to lose her—the thought of her, of her deep 
eyes, stirred him, possessed him, driving away all 
other images. 

He shook his head despairingly, went into the 
hall, got his bag, and walked back to the chair 
in the parlor. He unlatched the bag on his lap, 
removed from it a bundle of long Manila envel¬ 
opes, separated them, opened them. He took out 
the contents of each, looked through them, and 
replaced all in the original order. He closed the 
envelopes, united them with a wide band of red 
rubber, and made numerous calculations and fan¬ 
tastic scrolls in pencil on the outer one. His eyes 
wandered; and he tapped the envelopes with the 
unsharpened end of his pencil, as he looked 


64 QUEST 

through the partly opened window, to the grass, 
sparkling with the green of early spring, and 
beyond it to the black road. He heard the clink¬ 
ing of harness as a farmer’s wagon passed over 
the soft earth, the chirping of sparrows, the 
whistling of the train which would have brought 
him to town. The sounds from the kitchen had 
ceased. While he was bending over his papers, 
he had heard steps on the stair and moving about 
on the floor above. Now all the house was quiet. 

Once more he gazed moodily down on his bag. 
It was true, papers had no heart, no life. He 
ought to get back to his tools. He was certain 
that that was the cause of his wrong: all had 
started with that desertion. He recollected how, 
during his visit to the factory, he had walked 
about, listening to the loud rattle of air hammers 
and the ringing of anvils, or watching the assem¬ 
blers as they toiled with the frame of a great 
engine. He must in some way get back. All 
would be well if he could do that; but how he was 
to do it he did not know. Wistfully he turned 
to the image of Edith. Perhaps she could show 
him, he thought; and he did not find the thought 
absurd. 

He removed the burden from his lap and 
stretched his long legs and folded his hands. He 
lifted his eyes above the housetops and watched 
the moving clouds beyond the green lace of the 


QUEST 65 

trees. He became enthralled without knowing 
what was the magic which had cast its spell over 
him—he considered himself not a believer in 
magic anyway. He felt his heart stirred by a 
shadowy uplifting. The emotion was sweet, and 
it took possession of him without letting him 
know of his surrender. 

Time passed, and once more there was moving 
of feet on the floor above. 


VII 


AS David’s ears became more attentive to the 
r\ sounds above, his eyes were shifted from 
the window to the few steps of the stairway 
which he could see through the narrow frame of 
the parlor door; and, while he waited, the agita¬ 
tion which beset him was unlike what he had suf¬ 
fered before, being free entirely from dread and 
remorse and reflection, having only desire and 
eager restlessness. 

In that triangle of the stair which he could 
watch, he caught sight of Edith’s skirt, and saw, 
following after, the chubby legs of Crosby’s in¬ 
fant daughter. There were voices in the hall; 
and then Edith passed by the doorway, stopping, 
at the demand of her charge, to search for some 
toy or other amid the disorder of the hall bench. 
David became lost to himself in looking at her. 
He did not see her face, but he was more than 
ever convinced of her beauty. Each movement 
that she made aroused him more completely. 
Her hair was uncovered, and he could feel its 
softness as if it had brushed his hand. Presently, 
she completed her search, giving to the child the 
wished-for doll, and then she glanced into the 
room where David was sitting. 

66 


QUEST 6 7 

He spoke to her. “Are you going any place, 
or just walking?” 

Edith smiled and took her niece’s free hand. 
“I’m taking Betty for a walk.” 

“Will you let me go with you?” he ventured. 

“Yes, you may go—that is, if you have fin¬ 
ished with your papers.” 

In what she said she was only playful, but 
David took from her words a rebuke more stern 
than that of his host of the previous night. The 
papers were hateful. “I have finished, long ago,” 
he replied in an abashed tone, and, closing them 
out of sight in the bag, he went into the hall. 

Edith walked slowly ahead toward the door; 
but the little girl showed more eagerness at his 
coming and dropped the doll, which had been the 
object of so much hunting, in order to take his 
hand. David borrowed a hat; and with the child 
between them, he and Edith strolled to the end 
of the street, where the cinder path disappeared 
in the weeds of the roadside, and the last house 
stood bravely against the encroachment of stalk- 
strewn fields. They spoke but little. Edith, as 
if held back by her morning’s forwardness, left 
the burden on David; but David was moved be¬ 
yond what he could have said, and could think 
of nothing else to say. Their small companion 
became increasingly restive at their constraint. 


68 


QUEST 

“Most people I don’t let take hold of my hands 
this way, like a baby. Most people I run in front 
of and yell,” the child informed them. 

“Why are you partial to us?” asked Edith. 

“Because you’re my aunt and uncle.” 

“Oh, indeed.” 

“Why are you my aunt?” Betty demanded. 

“Because I’m your mother’s sister.” 

“You’re my uncle, aren’t you?” she directed at 
David. 

“In a way, I am,” he answered dully, recalled 
from his new absorption. 

“Why are you my uncle?” 

“Well, because I’m your father’s friend.” 

“Are all Daddy’s friends my uncles?” the child 
persisted. 

“They should be,” answered David. 

A little distance away, at one side of the road, 
lay a patch of hickory and walnut woodland; and, 
since the ground seemed firm enough to bear 
them, they ventured on toward it. 

“Why don’t you talk?” Betty whined. 

“Because we’re not jabberers,” said Edith. 
“People do not talk when they have nothing to 
say.” 

David looked gravely at her. “No, I think, 
instead, that it’s when people have nothing to say 
that they can talk,” he commented. 

Edith smiled. “Isn’t it so?” she said indif- 


QUEST 69 

ferently, without glancing up. “My sister, for 
instance, talks all the time, but it’s very rare she 
says anything.” She paused. “This afternoon, 
though, Bess talked a good deal about you. I 
think she said more than usual, then.” 

“I wish she wouldn’t,” David mumbled, feeling 
his happiness destroyed by the revival of his 
torment. 

“In a way I do too. It would have been nicer 
to get acquainted by ourselves—if we were to get 
acquainted—without a lot of second-hand notions 
of each other. Still, I did not mind listening.” 

David frowned, struggling with his confused 
impulses. In their walk, they came at length to a 
stile, built in the rail fence which surrounded the 
grove. 

“Let us rest here a while before we go back,” 
Edith suggested. 

With his broad hand, David brushed off the 
topmost step, and Edith with simple grace 
climbed to the seat prepared for her. Betty 
scrambled past them both over the stile to the 
leaf-spread ground of the enclosure; and the two 
looked after her and mentioned her prettiness 
and her wantonness. Edith spoke of Bess’s way 
of bringing up the child. It would not have been 
her way. 

After a time, David seated himself lower on 
the stile, so that he looked up at her. A light 


70 QUEST 

breeze swept a wisp of hair on her forehead. 
Her eyes had none of their morning’s defiance; 
her lips were parted in a quiet smile at his 
homage. 

“About what you said a little while ago,” 
David began with earnest abruptness, “about get¬ 
ting acquainted. I hope you will, whatever you 
have to think afterwards, do it by yourself. 
You’ll not want to go far, I’m afraid. But don’t 
listen to your sister or Henry. I’m not anything 
they say of me.” 

He paused. At the sudden, broken intensity 
of his speech, as if aroused by a desire to rid him¬ 
self of a stigma, Edith’s faint brows drew to¬ 
gether in perplexity. Then she covered her dis¬ 
quiet and smiled down at him again. “But I’m 
sure they say only nice things.” 

“I know it,” David mumbled. He shook his 
head and turned away. 

Edith was puzzled at him, kept from amuse¬ 
ment by his seriousness. “But you did save the 
man’s life,” she reaffirmed. 

David glanced quickly at her, his face lined with 
his distress. “That’s it; I almost made him lose 
it,” he went on in a low voice. “I was to blame 
for our getting into the river and for his getting 
hurt. After that I didn’t do anything I didn’t 
have to do. It was like the horses—they saved 
us both, but you don’t praise them. I was like 


QUEST 71 

that. It was all a kind of accident. I didn’t 
think; I just acted. I put out my arm, and just 
happened to catch hold of him.” 

He felt relieved to have got off so much of his 
confession. He glanced upward again to discover 
the effect of his words. Edith continued to smile 
quietly at him. 

“You are still somewhat of a hero,” she said. 

He shook his head. “I don’t see how you can 
say that.” 

“Sometime I may tell you,” she replied, adding, 
“but I ought to say much more than that after 
having treated you so wretchedly this morning.” 

“You would treat me much worse, if you would 
only see,” he said huskily. 

“See what?” 

“What I am. This manager business. I didn’t 
deserve to be manager.” He paused. She said 
nothing. “No, that’s not right,” he corrected, 
and stopped, tangled in his thought. 

Edith laughed. “Of course it isn’t. I don’t 
see what’s the matter with you. You should be 
proud.” 

David dropped his eyes; but he was less un¬ 
happy than he believed himself to be at her fail¬ 
ure to accept his judgment of himself. And 
though his burden still weighed on him, he made 
no more effort to unburden himself. Edith pen¬ 
sively looked down at his enwrapt face. The 


72 QUEST 

land before them was an open pasture sloping 
away to the west, where the sky had become en¬ 
circled with the gold of the setting sun. Now for 
a time they silently watched the shifting colors 
of the clouds over the prairie, and then, the sky 
graying above their heads, Edith spoke of 
returning. 

David raised himself and looked into the grove 
but could discover Betty nowhere within his sight. 
He called, and Edith called; but their calling 
brought no reply. 

“Stay here and wait. I’ll find her; don’t 
worry,” David said brusquely. 

He leaped over the stile and strode off among 
the dusky trees, calling as he went and straining 
his eyes for a glimpse of the wayward sprite in 
the shadows. The assurance in his words to 
Edith and in his steps was not in his heart. The 
horror of a former woodland search came over 
him as his imagination pictured some possible 
misfortune, and he stopped still for a moment 
shuddering. Then he called again, more earn¬ 
estly, and strode on more rapidly, in order to 
prove his fears groundless. 

His hunt was not greatly extended. A short 
distance to the front and to one side of him he 
perceived the small, white form he searched for, 
half-kneeling on the ground. David ran to her, his 
anxiety turning to anger; but his anger was soft- 


QUEST 73 

ened by closer sight of its prompter. The child’s 
golden head was wreathed with violets; her thin 
neck bore another, longer chain; and her small, 
dirtied hand held a bouquet to which she con¬ 
tinued to add, oblivious of the anxiety which her 
truancy had caused. When she knew that David’s 
footsteps were close behind her, she boldly turned 
her eyes to him and laughed with mischievous 
delight. 

“I heard you all the time. My, but you made a 
lot of noise.” 

“I suppose I did,” said David, his voice still 
heavy from apprehension. “You’re a great clown. 
Who is it you’re picking those violets for?” 

“For myself, of course. Look, I found three 
yellow ones.” 

“Come,” said David, and taking her hand he 
lifted her quickly from the ground and led her 
away with him. As they walked back, David’s 
earth-bound gaze fell upon a bank grown purple 
with violets. He stopped, bent down, and in 
great haste scooped them into his hands. Then 
he resumed his walk, tearing away as he went 
along, the roots and moss which his impetuous¬ 
ness had gathered with the flowers. 

“Who did you pick those flowers for?” mim¬ 
icked Betty. 

“For your Aunt Edith,” he replied in a voice 
subdued by shyness toward the infant. 


74 


QUEST 

At last, coming into the outer fringe of trees, 
he had full view of the rail fence and the stile 
and the pasture land beyond, rolling easily away 
to the horizon, and he saw Edith’s figure outlined 
against the orange sky beyond the field. She 
sat erect, her side toward him, on the top¬ 
most step, as she had been when he left 
her. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her 
head was turned a little into the sky. The 
whole quality of romance in her unconscious 
pose appealed to that which was at the root 
of his nature; and he held tight to the child’s 
hand, and stopped where he was, and looked 
before him. 

While he stood there, Edith remained more 
motionless than the clouds behind her. He be¬ 
lieved he could observe the slow rise and fall of 
her bosom. He caught the serene poise of her 
head with hair falling away from the temples to 
a soft roll above her neck. Dimly he perceived 
how complete was the repose of her spirit; and 
yet he had also a perception of power and of 
energy, reserved, but lying ready in her erect 
body. To him repose came only with exhaustion, 
and energy found its sole expression in movement. 
He wondered at her, and his wonder became 
touched with awe, and he stood entranced. 

Presently, Edith slowly turned her face toward 
the wood and saw him standing there. She arose, 


QUEST 75 

smoothed her skirts, stepped down from the stile, 
and walked a little way through the tangled grass 
toward the road. 

David was awakened. He swept Betty up into 
his arms and ran to the stile and over it. Com¬ 
ing to the side of Edith, he placed the child on the 
ground between them, and they started to walk 
back as they had come. 

“You were long,” said Edith. “Had she 
strayed far?” 

“Not far. Were you worried?” 

“No, because I knew you would find her.” 

Without speaking, David thrust his tribute into 
her hands. Edith smiled and arranged the flow¬ 
ers more in the likeness of a bouquet. 

“Oh, thank you,” she said, “I didn’t know that 
was what kept you.” 

“It’s nothing. I just happened to see them.” 

In his words was an echo of an earlier speech. 
“Just another accident?” she asked. 

David felt reproved, as he had when she spoke 
of his bag. Perhaps, he thought, he should have 
better arranged the flowers himself before giving 
them to her. Glancing up, however, he saw that 
her smile lingered after her voice with its soft 
reproof was silent, and found comforting re¬ 
assurance. 

Darkness came on apace; but they did not 
hasten their steps. 


76 QUEST 

The following day he learned more of Edith, 
much more, as he thought, from the eager Crosby. 
Crosby delivered himself, seated on the tongue of 
a wagon in his shop, his brows bent seriously, his 
remarks punctuated by movements of his cigar, 
either in his mouth or between his thumb and 
finger. He claimed to know her, to have studied 
her; but he was more sentimental than analytic, 
and his fund was not enriching beyond calculation. 

She was a strange person, he said; she liked to 
read and dream over her reading and walk alone. 
With shrewd eye, he spoke of her popularity 
among the young men of Knox County—he was 
explicit in giving the locality of the Warren 
estate—and of her attitude toward them. People 
had said that she was cold and indifferent, or, 
worse than that, haughty; but he knew that that 
was not so. He instanced her queer tenderness, 
for animals. She was not indifferent, would not 
be indifferent. Still, he admitted, she did puzzle 
him. She never seemed quite happy, seemed to 
have lost something, or never to have found some¬ 
thing deep in her desire. She had told him once, 
in a rare moment of confidence, that she was tired 
of wasting her time and that she wondered if ever 
she would cease to waste it. She was waiting, 
searching. She was strange—she was not at all 
like Bess—seemed at times much older, though 
she was only twenty-four (Crosby deducted two 


QUEST 77 

years from what he thought to be more than age 
enough). He could not make her out, but he 
had loved her as he would a sister, and had hoped 
that David might bring— 

But there David stopped him, saying bluntly 
that it was impossible, that he wasn’t fit; and, 
when Crosby asked him why, David condemned 
him for his extravagant praise and said that that 
made the impossibility complete. Then, despite 
his contention, he walked away from the store to 
the livery stable, and from there, with horse and 
buggy, drove to keep an appointment with her. 

Out along the road by the woodland where they 
had stopped on the evening before, they drove, 
until they were beyond the wood and out amid 
the open farmland, with hedges and snake fences 
crawling lazily over its undulations, and road 
leading on endlessly—tauntingly, had they sought 
a goal through the soft earth which dragged at 
the wheels. For a while they spoke as the aspect 
of things prompted them to speak; and Edith, 
who was not less a farmer than David, could as 
well note the growth of the winter wheat or cal¬ 
culate the date when the corn lands might be 
safely plowed. Far to one side they saw a man 
sowing oats. David asked if there were not danger 
of frost, but Edith was of the opinion that there 
was no danger, since her father had already planted 
his, where the season came later than here. 


78 QUEST 

They rode on, and the sower was lost alike to 
their sight and to their thoughts. A silence came 
upon them. Edith watched him without turning 
her face, studied him, endeavored to penetrate 
his moods, to see him free from moods, tried to 
picture him doing various things. They heard 
the slushing impress of the horse’s hoofs and the 
dropping of mud from the slow wheels. 

The awkwardness of their half-intimacy, of 
their lingering strangeness, of his own uncertain 
urge, pricked David sharply. “Do you think 
we’ve begun to get acquainted by ourselves?” he 
asked. 

“I don’t know,” Edith laughed, “we seemed to 
be making a start yesterday. But there’s been an 
interruption since then. Bess spent most of the 
morning talking about you, and it isn’t likely that 
Harry was silent.” 

“That’s true. He talked of nothing else but 
you from the time we left the house after dinner 
until I left him.” 

“They amuse me, and annoy me, too,” rejoined 
Edith. “But tell me anyway,” she added, turning 
sideways in the seat, “what was it Harry said to 
you?” 

“Oh, he said many things,” David answered, 
fumbling with his fantastic impressions. “He said 
you were a strange person.” 

“He’s not near the talent in match-making I 


QUEST 79 

gave him credit for having. Bess did much better 
by you.” 

“I know,” said David, gloomily again, “I wish 
she wouldn’t. I wish you wouldn’t listen.” 

“Why shouldn’t you want me to listen to such 
pleasant things?” 

“I should, nothing better, if they were true.” 

“Well,” Edith went on, slowly watching him, 
“would you be any happier if I said I didn’t be¬ 
lieve all they say, that, for instance, there might 
be another reason than modesty for not telling 
about that managership?” 

David was obviously not happier. His resolu¬ 
tion to lay bare all truth had lost its force. He 
could not tell her now. He knew he could not 
make her understand. He felt sure that she did 
not even see how great a thing the managership 
was, how terribly he had desired it, how terribly 
he had come to hate his desire. He was sure also 
that she did not know what other feeling stirred 
him. 

Edith did not take her eyes from his downcast 
face. It seemed to her that he had the look of 
one hurrying along a poorly-marked trail; but the 
trail she did not recognize and the hurry she could 
not explain. She perceived only that she had 
touched deeper than she had expected, or had 
wished, and she withdrew, herself bewildered and 
penitent. 


8o 


QUEST 

“That was not a kind thing I said. I’m afraid 
I’m not a kind person,” she apologized. 

“It’s nothing,” David mumbled, and then after 
a short distance, “sometime, maybe, I’ll tell you 
about it all. You’ll be able to judge then your¬ 
self.” 

“We are to see each other again?” Edith asked 
indifferently. He had already told her he was to 
leave early the next morning. 

“You said ‘some time’ yesterday,” he reminded 
her. 

She smiled at his recollection. 

“I hope we shall, at any rate,” David added. 

“Accidentally, perhaps?” 

Again he felt that she was chiding him, but he 
could not tell why. “Some way, I hope,” he mur¬ 
mured, confused, and distressed with his mute¬ 
ness. They drove on in a silence which was locked 
down on them unbreakably. 

Later, as they reentered the village, their sec¬ 
ond evening was falling about them. Edith 
looked up into the sky. “There’s a circle ’round 
the moon,” she observed, “The next week will 
bring more rain.” 

“I wish it could bring me something of what I 
want,” David said from the depth of his mood. 

“What is that?” 

“Oh—nothing.” 


VIII 


D AVID returned willingly to his office, for, 
though he had lost all joy in what awaited 
him, and had been convinced that it 
brought him no nearer his obscure goal, he was, 
at least, more at home there. He was on ground 
whose very jaggednesses were comfortingly 
familiar; he was more in possession of himself, 
he felt his inarticulateness less. He met first with 
Newton, who, under the impression that he had 
been employed on matters more strictly con¬ 
cerned with their business, presumed that he was 
uninformed of the changes which had come to 
pass in his absence. 

“There’s sure a surprise here for you, Bullard,” 
said Newton, “Pratt’s been in town for a couple 
days tearing things up, pretty much in your favor. 
I’d have telegraphed you about it, if I’d known 
where I could reach you, but he decided to lay 
over anyway to talk to you himself. The fact is 
that you’re to be manager from now on with 
control of both sales and collections.” 

David made no comment. His jaw was set; 
his brows bore down sullenly. He perceived the 
dejection which lay hidden beneath the amiable 
features of Newton’s round face. 

“You knew it before?” Newton questioned. 

81 


82 


QUEST 

“What are you going to do?” asked David, 
avoiding the question.^ 

“What is there for me to do? It all happened 
too fast for me to do anything. Only day before 
yesterday it was that Pratt arrived, and now 
everything is over. He suggested I stay here in 
the sales department, and I can’t do anything 
but accept—provided, of course, you’re willing.” 
David nodded, mortified at the first use of this 
new power. “I’d not embarrass you,” Newton 
added, “but at my age a man can’t pick up his 
family and go off without a prospect, trusting 
he’ll find something better than he has already.” 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know—” 

“Of course, you had nothing to do with it. If 
I thought you had, I couldn’t talk to you like this, 
so don’t be worried about that. And I’m glad, 
Bullard, so long as it had to be somebody else 
that got the place, that it was you they chose. I 
know you can handle it.” He went on ingenu¬ 
ously: “But it’s pretty much of a blow to me, 
just the same; and a good thing, too, that it came 
this year instead of last; otherwise it’s not likely 
Grace could have gone back to school.” 

David moved away, stung by Newton’s guile¬ 
lessness and by his own remorse and uncertainty. 
He sat down before his desk, opened it, but 
did no more. He had no choice but to go 
on. He stared at the papers arranged on the 


QUEST 83 

broad desk-top, and then he put himself to work. 

Days and weeks went by; his remorse softened 
so that it pricked him no more; his humiliation 
disappeared. His elevation brought new labors, 
added responsibilities. He gave himself to both, 
gradually became aware of a new sense of secur¬ 
ity and self-importance and from that derived a 
measure of contentment. Those things which 
would rob of him peace, he endeavored to put 
aside. He silenced his qualms. The old man of 
the river, for the time, he forgot entirely; Edith 
he did not visit and tried to escape in his dream¬ 
ing. In retrospect his behavior when he was with 
her was ludicrous, and the tumult she had stirred 
in him incomprehensible, however painfully real 
it had been. He feared her and feared her 
power to awake what he would keep quiescent. 
It was all useless and best forgotten. 

Yet a restlessness persisted. He was not much 
nearer to his tools; he was more than ever bound 
about with notes and quibbles; and he continued 
vaguely to be troubled. He gave himself vehe¬ 
mently to his work; and his fury brought forth 
its fruit. From this he could exult grimly; and 
his imagination clothed the drabness of his work 
with the glorious color of his exertion. 


In the second month after his installation as 


84 QUEST 

manager occurred what David felt to be the 
crowning act of his career, the delivery of a road¬ 
making outfit, including engine and scraper and 
tank-wagon, in a township near Galesburg, in 
Knox County, territory which until his time the 
company’s travelers had rarely penetrated with 
result. So great, in fact, was the event that, in¬ 
stead of leaving the delivery to be an affair be¬ 
tween the railroad and the supervisors, he de¬ 
cided to take part in the ceremony himself. So 
taking with him a mechanic, he went to Gales¬ 
burg, thence driving by horse and buggy to the 
outlying station where, on a siding, elevated upon 
a flat-car, stood majestically before his eyes the 
caparisoned machinery. 

Two of the county supervisors and several of 
the non-offlcial farmers of the neighborhood had 
come to watch. With these, David, to whom 
every substantial man in denim had become a 
prospective purchaser of engines, made himself 
acquainted; and he met, as he was accustomed, 
the shrewd reserve of men determined not to be 
persuaded against their will, and rather confusing 
will with obstinacy. The test which the afternoon 
would furnish he relied upon to shatter this awful 
defense. A neighboring thresherman had been 
engaged to run the engine. The boiler was full; 
the fire was hot; the piston rod at length gained 
strength to move the wheel. 


QUEST 85 

When all was made ready, and the gap between 
the car and the gravel embankment against which 
it was backed had been bridged with heavy plank¬ 
ing, the thresherman-engineer ascended to his 
platform. Impressively he adjusted the valves, 
and, seizing the clutch arm with the same grand 
casualness, thrust it forward. The tractor re¬ 
mained motionless. The engineer, with move¬ 
ments followed closely, suspiciously, by his spec¬ 
tators, pulled back the clutch arm and released it 
again; and again there was no hint of motion in 
the polished gears. Thereupon he leaned force¬ 
fully against it; but this action, which could have 
produced no effect under any circumstance, pro¬ 
duced no effect now. The engineer’s ingenuity, 
with the failure of that last push, was exhausted, 
so that he could devise no further expedient than 
the working back and forth of the clutch lever. 
The farmers grew restive and confirmed in their 
suspicions. 

Impelled by anger at this balk, David stepped 
boldly ahead of his mechanic, climbed to the 
floor of the car and to the engine platform. He 
thrust the engineer aside and tried the lever once 
himself; and, finding it still to fail in its duty of 
awaking the gears, he spent no time at indecisive 
movements, but at once closed the throttle and 
relieved the pressure of steam. 

While the turning of the fly-wheel died out, he 


86 QUEST 

removed his coat, rolled back his sleeves, and 
pulled over his trousers a suit of overalls; and, 
thus prepared, he climbed to the top of the en¬ 
gine and set to work. The adjustment had to do 
with expanding the turnbuckles of the clutch arm 
so that the shoes would be forced firmly to their 
lodging in the rim of the wheel. It was a simple 
one, one to which, in his former mechanic days, 
his fingers had grown practiced and now effected 
as easily as then. He stepped down to the plat¬ 
form, waited calmly until the wheel was turning 
again, and when the proper moment was reached, 
gently released the lever. The defect had been 
remedied; the great drive-wheels began painfully 
to turn; and the tractor rolled across the groaning 
planks to the gravel and so down to the road. 
Not until the engine was stopped, faced in the 
direction toward which it would later proceed, 
did David relinquish control. 

Whether or not his engine had gained the ad¬ 
miration of the spectators, there was no doubt 
of his own triumph. He had made no false 
move. In their eyes he had behaved without a 
flaw. His getting into overalls and performing 
the task himself instead of leaving it to the me¬ 
chanic had pleased them. The ease with which 
he had located the trouble, the quickness with 
which he had removed it, the knowing manner in 


QUEST 87 

which he had handled the machinery and had 
guided the tractor to the road, all aroused in¬ 
creasingly their respect. The first acts had re¬ 
moved the taint of urbanity and had made him 
one with the rest; the latter had set him indis¬ 
putably above them. 

“You’re all right, son; you know the workings 
of your old engine as if she were your wife, and 
that’s more than most of these fellows do who 
come around here,” said one with a pat on the 
shoulder when David jumped from the cab, and 
he had, in proof of his success, no trouble in get¬ 
ting help to drag the scraper and the wagon from 
the car to the road behind the engine. 

Once more the thresherman took his place; 
once more the drive-wheels started forward; and 
the train moved with its unalterable painfulness 
across the railway and on down the road until, 
behind a wild hedge of blackberry bushes, it hid 
itself, leaving in sight only its gray smoke, which 
floated in clouds over the hedge and across a field 
of ripening grain and then in a gusty wind was 
swept up into the sky. David watched it, standing 
silent among the men who were now ready to 
listen to him. 

At length he turned to the farmer nearest by. 
“Do you happen to know a man by the name of 
Warren, over near Colfax Siding?” he asked. 

The man indicated that he did, in a way which 


88 QUEST 

showed Warren’s greatness in the neighborhood. 

“How far is his place from here?” 

“Oh, about eleven miles.” 

“And from Galesburg?” 

“About six or seven. You see, it’s a little to 
the other side of Galesburg. You kind of go 
’round back of the town.” And he went on to 
give instructions, elaborate beyond chance of re¬ 
membering, as to how the distances were to be 
traversed; but David, accustomed to involved 
locution, sifted all in his mind and trusted to the 
regularity of the section lines and to the general 
direction which he had gathered. 

When it was too late to withhold anything of 
importance, the farmer stopped short, as if afraid 
he had given information better withheld. “War¬ 
ren’s got a tractor,” he said. 

“That doesn’t matter,” David reassured him, 
“he’s got something else that interests me more.” 

His informant laughed knowingly. “Well, tell 
him you saw Fred Vandervoort,” he said as he 
walked away to his horse. 

David looked at his watch. It was nearly five; 
the distance was not great; but by driving slowly 
he believed he would get there safely after the 
supper hour. The thought of his own supper was 
firmly cast aside. His decision was made. One 
of the supervisors agreed to take his helper back 


QUEST 89 

to town; the station agent made offer of a wash 
basin; and so, a few minutes later, he set out with 
his responsibilities fulfilled and himself scrubbed 
and brushed as thoroughly as could be desired. 

His thoughts, however, once he was started to¬ 
ward his goal, wandered strangely from it. The 
prospect of pleasure became disturbed with mis¬ 
givings, with a perplexing quickening in his heart. 
At first he chided himself for starting so late, for 
going at all after so long a delay, for permitting 
to revive what he wished to still, for reviving him¬ 
self where he was probably forgotten. More 
severely he took himself to task for leaving the 
station so readily, for not following up what he 
knew to have been a victory. Then he wondered 
whether or not it was a victory; and the failure 
of the engine once more occupied his mind. 

“That clutch; that clutch”; the horse’s hoofs 
sang to him, re-awakening his anger. 

Aloud, he railed against the clutch. The mis¬ 
hap was inexcusable because it could be so easily 
remedied. It should be remedied; it was terrible 
that it had not been remedied. He saw how the 
bolt could be changed, the whole contrivance im¬ 
proved. It ought to be changed; the engine was 
weak as long as it remained as it was. 

The road turned and, across a flat common, 
brought to sight the gray station house, the white 
painted cattle pens near to it, and the general 


9 o QUEST 

store of Colfax. He stopped beside a man who 
was walking toward him in the yellow track and 
asked how to get to Warren’s. 

The man faced about and pointed with out¬ 
stretched arm. “All this here is part of his land, 
and that’s his place over there to the right, behind 
those elms,” he said. “Take the first lane you 
come to and go along it till you get to the house. 
You can’t miss it.” 

David thanked him and drove to the beginning 
of the lane. From his seat he grasped the lever 
of an ingenious and unbeautiful mechanical gate, 
pulled it open, drove through, from his seat 
swinging the gate closed in the same manner he 
had opened it, and went on down the narrow road. 
For some distance the way led between twin corn¬ 
fields. Beyond these, on one side of the road, 
lay a broad and well-tended apple orchard, while 
on the other, sheltered within a grove of elm and 
black walnut, stood the house, a rambling struc¬ 
ture of white clapboards and shingle roof, with 
a narrow porch which stretched the whole length 
of the front. 

On the porch were three persons whom he 
could readily place as father, mother, and younger 
sister Ruth—Crosby had told him the name. 
Edith was not there, and at her absence he was 
dismayed and again repented his coming; but, in 
full view as he was, he knew he could not turn 


QUEST 91 

back. He hoped that from wherever she was she 
would see him and come out. He drove slowly, 
but the gateway came abreast of him without his 
prayer being answered. 

While he tied his horse, the father, a towering, 
bearded man in a brownish suit whose comfort¬ 
able wrinkles indicated an opulence which had 
abandoned overalls as an habitual garment, 
walked leisurely to the gate and greeted the 
stranger. 

“I’m David Bullard,” the young man began. 

“Bullard; David,” the father mulled, as an 
obvious interest sharpened his eye, “Hank 
Crosby’s friend, oh, yes.” 

“Yes,” repeated David, “I’ve come to see 
Edith.” 

“Edith’s not here. But you come in anyway.” 
He swung open the gate. “Had supper?” 

“Yes,” said David, sternly overriding his 
hunger. 

They walked to the porch, and the mother came 
to meet them. In her quiet, serious face, David 
thought he could find traces of Edith’s beauty; 
but he saw also in the pallid cheeks and straight 
lips the impress of half a century’s daily routine 
from half-past four or five till nine, with its meek¬ 
ness and submission of which there was no trace 
in Edith. She spoke pleasantly, as if she had long 
known him; and David had to pass a second 


92 QUEST 

inquiry after his missing supper. They sat and 
talked, about the crops and about the weather and 
the Crosbys; and in their conversation the daugh¬ 
ter, a shy, red-cheeked girl of fifteen years, sat 
with her chin resting upon her folded hand, listen¬ 
ing, unnoticed. 

Presently, with unconscious abruptness, the 
mother remarked, “Edith’s at a party over at the 
Heminways’. You’d better drive over.” 

“Yes, you’d better go over,” Warren imme¬ 
diately seconded his wife. “You can take a 
short-cut out back of the barn to the main road. 
Turn to your left, about half a mile—it’s the 
only brick house. Besides, there’ll be a crowd 
about. It’ll be easy to find.” Then, as if indica¬ 
tive of his lack of faith in words to express any 
sort of idea, “Come, I’ll show you to the lane.” 

David, followed, walking, leading his horse. 
Within sight of the road he was to take, the 
father shook his hand with warmth which indi¬ 
cated no lapse from reserve and waved him good¬ 
bye after he had climbed into his buggy. Beyond 
the outer gate, David paused, uncertain as to 
which direction he should choose. He was per¬ 
suaded that it would be better to turn right and 
by circuitous route return to town. Nevertheless, 
he went to the left, and apprehensive in spirit, 
drove onward, searching on either side of the 
road for a brick house. 


IX 


T here was still a little light in the sum¬ 
mer sky when he reached the house which 
answered the father’s description. Under 
the trees, far back from the road, a long table 
was spread, about which were gathered twenty 
or thirty young men and women. David heard 
their gay, ringing voices as he approached, and 
he noticed, too, their silence and curious view of 
him when it was seen that he was coming in. At 
the long hitch-rail beside the fence he tied his 
horse with the horses of the guests and entered 
the yard. 

A hesitancy during which he debated whether 
to go first to the door of the house or to the table 
gave him a great awareness of self; and he walked 
some distance in a course which was neither 
toward one goal or the other, his legs feeling 
jointless, his hands almost overweighing him, 
before one of the young women, who had been 
serving the others, left the table and came for¬ 
ward. An instant after her, a second young 
woman, similarly employed, with a quick, startled 
movement, put down her tray and ran and caught 
up with the first. The second he recognized as 
Edith, and he stopped and waited for her. He 
had a flash of her lilac-colored dress and her light 
93 


94 QUEST 

brown hair. He saw that she was breathing 
excitedly; that her cheeks were flushed, her eyes 
and lips both laughing. All about her was light¬ 
heartedness; and David was startled at finding 
her different and unfamiliar—she had been so 
calm, so reserved, so terrifying before. 

More than ever he wondered what he should 
say, and he began by apologizing for coming. 
Edith stopped him and said that it was nice of 
him to come. She introduced him to the waiting 
young woman, who was Martha Heminway; and, 
by the two of them he was led toward the table. 

“You must be nearly famished,” said Edith. 

David did not this time refuse, but he took the 
place which was made for him at the end of the 
table and accepted the food which Edith and 
Martha brought. The supper had been nearly 
over when David appeared; and, after the diver¬ 
sion of his arrival had worn off, the others, pay¬ 
ing little more attention to him, gradually moved 
away from the table. Occasionally they strolled 
off through the trees, two by two; but more gen¬ 
erally they separated themselves according to 
sex, the men forming a jocular group to one side, 
most of the girls disappearing within the house, a 
few remaining to clear the table, helped by two 
or three of the bolder spirits among the males. 
Edith came to sit beside David, and David at once 
pushed away his plate and turned in his chair so 


QUEST 95 

that he was facing her. For a time he looked 
earnestly at her with brows set; and then his 
expression softened and a smile grew along his 
lips. 

“It’s fine to see you again,” he said, and re¬ 
lapsed into gravity, “but I don’t want to spoil 
anything. You were all happy with yourselves. 
I’m afraid I shouldn’t have come. I really don’t 
belong here.” 

“You do belong here,” replied Edith with gay 
assurance. “You belong here, because I’m glad 
to have you here. It’s my party as much as it is 
Martha’s or anybody’s. If I’d have known you 
were coming, I should have waited for you.” 

David faltered. “Well, I didn’t know myself 
that I was coming. I just happened to be in the 
neighborhood, about twelve miles from here, de¬ 
livering an engine; and I thought I’d pay you a 
visit. Your father sent me over here.” 

“So it was an accident, after all,” said Edith, 
her voice dropping, “I knew you would never come 
otherwise.” 

To David as he now looked upon her, it seemed 
impossible that he should not have come. “I 
would have found some excuse, surely,” he mum¬ 
bled, “I would have had to see you.” 

“You would have trusted to excuses, to acci¬ 
dents.” She shook her head. “No, I am sure 
that it was your business alone that brought you 


96 QUEST 

here and that I had nothing at all to do with it. 
And I’d not be surprised if before you’d left you’d 
sold us a whole yard full of machinery.” 

“No, don’t think that. I wanted to see you 
only,” David protested. 

A voice from the house called her away before 
he could decide whether she was serious in her 
upbraiding or not, or what exactly was at the root 
of it; and after she had gone, he sat gazing 
toward the door through which she had vanished, 
as if the steadiness of his look would bring her 
forth again. Darkness settled down. In the 
house lamps were lighted, casting pale rectangles 
across the grass from the long windows of the 
first floor. From one of the lower rooms came 
the sound of music, two violins and a piano; and 
people began to move past the table by which he 
was sitting on their way to the house. At length, 
he too arose and walked across the lawn. Edith 
appeared in the doorway, searched through the 
dark, and started toward him. 

A second time a voice from the house caught 
her, now a man’s, plaintive in its appeal, “Edith 
Warren, you promised me first dance.” 

Edith turned and laughed and, calling to 
David that he might have the next if he wished 
it, she vanished from him again. 

He stood on the porch, vaguely listening to the 
music, staring abstractedly at those about him, 


QUEST 97 

dwelling still upon their last sentences together 
and suffering a sharp feeling of strangeness and 
unrest, which the music made more poignant. At 
the end of the dance, Edith came to him. She 
slipped her hand into his arm, and they strolled 
away from the porch. 

“I’m sorry to have been away so long,” she 
said. 

“It wasn’t unpleasant with this to look forward 
to,” he answered and felt a comforting pride in 
his answer. He laid his hand upon hers and then 
at once withdrew it. 

They walked silently. The night was bril¬ 
liantly dark. There was no moon; but the sky 
was cloudless, and the stars came near in their 
brightness. Up from the grass and against the 
black, indistinct forms of tree and bush flickered 
the cold, fantastic lights of fireflies. Other 
couples passed by them, aimlessly strolling. There 
was the sound of voices, of the rustling of skirts, 
and once more of the violins. Edith paused as 
if to change their direction. 

“I don’t dance,” David said sadly. “Do you 
want me to take you back?” 

“Not unless you want to get rid of me.” 

“No, I should never want that.” 

She replied with a light murmur of a laugh and 
gave herself back to his lead. They strolled far¬ 
ther among the black trees. The night en- 


98 QUEST 

veloped them. The music sounded fainter, 
sweeter; and they were stirred by its rhythm. 

“I am not gay at all now,” Edith spoke softly, 
“and yet I am happy.” 

David, too, was happy. He recognized the 
placidness of her voice, and felt that she was as 
he had known her at the house of his friend, and, 
finding that familiarity, felt more at ease. In the 
dark, her face was pale and thoughtful, awaken¬ 
ing in him the same wonder he had experienced 
when he saw her against the sunset. “It is beau¬ 
tiful,” he mumbled, vague concerning what he 
referred to, and coughed to drive the huskiness 
from his throat. Again he raised his hand to 
touch hers, but he felt a sacredness about her, and 
withheld himself. The music ceased, and they 
gradually turned their steps to the house. Within 
the gleam of the windows, he glanced into her 
eyes and then let his look fall upon the ground. 

“Your slippers are soaked with dew,” he told 
her. 

“Dew dries, and the slippers can be cleaned, 
but it would not matter,” she replied. Her voice 
was once more light and flaunting. She laughed 
as she tried to slide a wet sole upon the floor and 
laughed again, with a toss of her head at David, 
as she danced away with her next partner. 

David was puzzled at the second transforma¬ 
tion, but from near the doorway, where he stood, 


QUEST 99 

his eyes followed her about the room, noting how 
gracefully she moved, smiling unconsciously when 
she smiled, at her partner or at someone who 
had spoken in passing, and catching her glance 
when the convolutions of the waltz brought her 
close by. Gradually, as if under the influence of 
her lightness, he became more at ease, moved 
from one place to another, dropped an occasional 
word with those who came near him, and grew 
perfectly content. From time to time, Edith 
came to him, bringing a queue of followers. He 
talked with them or walked with her, or stood 
alone or in a crowd as chance left him, with a 
composure which came rarely to him. 

As Martha Heminway observed, he became 
one of the features of her assembly. His man¬ 
ner of arrival had possessed an element of ro¬ 
mance ; his bearing as a man of the city gave him 
distinction; his height and obvious strength pre¬ 
vented the slight which rural dwellers would oth¬ 
erwise have leveled against such distinction. He 
seemed older than the others. The guests noticed 
the difference of his behavior, the reserve of his 
manners and of his speech, the severity of his 
expression, the ease with which he smiled and the 
quickness with which his smiles vanished; and all 
this set him apart. There were whispers about 
him and about those who, awakening envy, were 
bold enough to adopt him. Martha knew this 


IOO 


QUEST 

and was innocently pleased to set herself up, was 
pleased also to take the attention of the curious 
young man and to discover that he was more 
bashful than stern. She spent as much time with 
him as possible and at the end of the evening 
forced him despite protestations, to be her part¬ 
ner in a Virginia reel. 

They took their positions near the middle of 
the lines so that he might have opportunity to 
learn the intricacies of the dance before it came 
their turn to perform. His eyes became fixed 
upon the lane where the dancers met. With set 
brows and slightly moving lips, he concentrated 
upon the steps and the movements of the hand 
and labored to memorize the order in which the 
figures appeared. His study was broken at seeing 
Edith glide past him; and then he found himself 
at the end of the line with her at the opposite 
corner. He was filled with joy as he walked 
toward her, and, with the whispers of his partner 
and the shouts of the first violin to guide him, he 
missed not a figure, and, when it came time to 
swing Edith around, he took the rules in his own 
hand and swung her twice instead of once, to the 
lusty approval of the bystanders. A little dizzy 
with his success, he grasped Martha’s fingers and 
skipped through the lane, and for him the dance 
was ended. 

When the guests departed and David had 


IOI 


QUEST 

placed Edith beside him in his buggy, his joy and 
excitement still possessed him. There were fare¬ 
well shouts, struggles for precedence along the 
road; and then the lights of the house faded from 
sight, and the carriages separated each in its own 
direction, and Edith and David drove on by them¬ 
selves. In their solitude David’s spirits grew 
more subdued. Edith sat motionless, looking up¬ 
wards at the sparkling sky, one hand in her lap, 
with fingers entwined in the ribbons of her hat, 
which she was holding, and the other hand resting 
against her shoulder. She turned her eyes up to 
him, quietly smiling. 

David, for an instant met her glance and then 
turned away. From the very perceptible stirrings 
in his breast, he recognized in a vague way that 
he was in love—that he wanted at least to take 
her hand; but what he recognized more clearly 
was that he was in a region unfamiliar to 
him, that he was trying to speak a language he 
did not know, to pull to the end of his tongue 
words which stuck far down in his throat. He 
felt impotent and absurd and robbed of the power 
of action. 

“I wish I could talk. I wish I could tell you. 
I wish I could show you with something,” he said 
suddenly. 

“Show what?” she asked. 

He bowed his head, abashed by his outbreak, 


102 


QUEST 

and by his inability to utter the thoughts which 
had caused it. “Nothing. It’s useless.” 

They drove up from behind the dark barn to 
the gate at the front of the house. David tied 
the horse, with unpracticed gentleness helped 
Edith to the ground, and walked beside her to the 
door. She raised the latch, opening into a room 
where one lamp was feebly burning. David lin¬ 
gered, looking mutely into her face. 

“I should not have kept you so late when you 
have so far to go,” Edith apologized. 

“I shall not notice it,” he answered in a 
whisper. 

“You’ll not wait again till an accident brings 
you here, will you?” she asked. 

“I’ll not, I swear,” he said and, continually 
looking around at her, walked back down the 
boarded path to the gate. 


X 


H E drove toward the town with the dark¬ 
ness as close as his horse’s head, the road 
scarcely discernible between the blacker 
lines of tree and hedge. There were no sounds 
but the drumming of his horse’s hoofs and the 
ceaseless crooning of locusts. 

David’s spirit lay in a calm wholly unlike the 
sluggish quiet which usually came over it when 
the ruffling of daily occupation was allayed. His 
heart beat strongly enough to make him aware of 
its beating; his mind was rich with images of 
Edith—as she had come to him flushed from the 
dance, as he had looked upon her within the shad¬ 
ows of the black trees, as they had met in the 
evolutions of the Virginia reel, as, at last, he had 
seen her face lighted by the lamp near the door¬ 
way. He was taken with a welling up of tender 
emotion, which, as yet, he gave no definition, nor 
applied to any end, but was happy with for its 
own sake. In the exaltation which possessed him, 
he was lifted above his ordinary self, and above 
the perplexing and foggy issues which usually 
confronted his loneliness. His body was fresh, 
his mind intensely keen. He had dropped his 
dreads and his restraints, and felt only joy and 
103 


io 4 QUEST 

eagerness; and, as he drove onward, these feel¬ 
ings increased. 

He listened to the sound of the hoofs and felt 
their rhythm like that of the music of the dance; 
and then he heard music and hoof-beats together. 
He found delight in the combination of sound and 
let himself be carried along by it. Gradually 
the music became fainter, as it had when he 
walked with Edith; but the hoof-beats contin¬ 
ued, and to their cadence another sound fitted 
itself. He listened as before, and the sound grew 
more distinct and shaped itself in words. 

“That clutch; that clutch; that clutch—” 

He felt no dismay at this intrusion of the after¬ 
noon into the exaltation of his night thoughts, per¬ 
ceived no disharmony, sought no escape. The 
sound had come up to him, not he down to it, and 
he surrendered his mind as readily as he had to 
the recollection of the music. A flood of sugges¬ 
tion arose. 

“If the bolts were made a little differently,” he 
pondered, hardly aware of the shifting of his 
thought, “if the angle of the shoe and the rim 
was made a little steeper. Yes, either would 
help, though there are other things, besides, which 
could be done.” 

“That clutch; that clutch,” the hoofs continued 
to drum. The engine stood before him robbed of 


QUEST 105 

the respect in which he had always held it, its 
every member exposed to his critical scrutiny. 

“Yes, there are other things which could be 
done. The balancing of the boiler is not adjusted 
as nicely as it should be. The gearing is ineffi¬ 
cient, hard to get at. The drive-wheels cannot 
be repaired, though they are always in need of 
repair. The whole construction is wasteful and 
heavy.” 

His thought became sharper. “A lighter, more 
efficient, more adaptable engine; that’s what is 
needed. An engine that will give itself to plow¬ 
ing and trucking as serviceably as to threshing.” 

He was no longer conscious even of the sound 
of hoofbeats. His mind leaped to the pinnacle of 
its strength, and from that height it beheld a 
vision. 

Into this vision first came Edith, in a new 
and more substantial guise, shining, beautiful, 
glorious with the power that was in her. Then 
came an engine, of his own design and of his own 
building, resplendent in his vision as she. He was 
conscious neither of impropriety nor of dispar¬ 
agement in this association of the engine with the 
woman. She seemed to him its sponsor and its 
patron, and he acknowledged her as in other 
times one would have seen in his endeavor the 
presence of a sainted or angelic guardian. The 
vision grew. From the smoke of the engine 


106 QUEST 

was raised a factory, his own factory. From the 
woman sprang a youth, somewhat resembling 
himself, but nobler in mien and strong and un¬ 
afraid where he knew himself to be weak, the 
image of what he had aspired to be—his son, 
who should receive his work. So, in Edith and 
in the engine dwelt the future. His vision was 
complete; and he gave his soul to its fulfillment. 

David rode on in the darkness. Calm was gone 
from him now, and peace or thought of peace. 
His heart beat fiercely; his body was shot through 
with fire; his moist forehead caught the night 
wind’s cool breath. 

He accepted his vision, felt no necessity to ex¬ 
amine it, did not question the worthiness of it, 
nor consider the selfishness or ruthlessness of it. 
He did not see that there were limitations to it, 
for he did not recognize how his imagination, 
despite its vividness and its strength, was earth- 
bound, how his aspiration was unable to reach 
higher than what his hands could build him. This 
summit he had attained was the ultimate. To 
labor, to exert himself breathlessly, to build, to 
leave after for one finer and stronger than he, to 
have this monument of his exertion extended 
further and carried into eternity, building upon 
building, until his foundation, though lost in the 
mass like the seed in the roots of a tree, should, 
notwithstanding, contain the whole structure— 


QUEST 107 

was there more that he could do than this? Was 
not the essence of life this? He saw that it was, 
and could conceive of nothing more noble or 
more worthy. 

“Edith,” he prayed, and the trembling of his 
voice was not from irresolution but from inten¬ 
sity of ardor, “Edith, help me to do this thing!” 
But his prayer, unlike that of one who in humility 
submits, accepting what his gods may bring him, 
implied that he would subject his gods to himself 
and make their powers work to his purposes, 
though the end involve destruction both of him¬ 
self and of the gods. 

He lifted up his face in his joy, as he saw that 
the past with its fears could now forever be left 
behind. It could mean no longer anything to him 
or have any influence over him. His escape at 
last was accomplished, his wandering ended. 
From his eminence he could look backward along 
the way he had traveled and perceive what he 
thought to be the errors in his way. He could 
admit his falsity in attaining the managership, 
could see how tainted it was in his hands, how he 
had been deluding himself during the two months 
in which it had been his. From this came no 
remorse now, however, for restitution was in 
sight. Soon he would resign, and the old author¬ 
ity, together with what he had added to it would 
be reassumed by Newton, He was dizzied with 


108 QUEST 

confidence. No longer would there be drifting or 
making of false moves, for his course was clear 
and his goal easily in view. He recalled the old 
man who had ridden with him on a stormy night 
of his youth and wished that the sage would ap¬ 
pear again to see how well he had weathered the 
storm, wished, too, that the old man of the ferry 
could see how little needed were his warnings. 
He was back to his tools now. All the old phan¬ 
toms faded to nothingness. There could be no 
cause for doubt or unrest, no dread of failure. 

He breathed greedily of the night air, lightly 
laden with the odors of clover and of ripening 
grain. A vast impatience filled him. He urged 
the horse to the limit of its trot, but the road 
remained endlessly long, the minutes torturing. 
At length the yellow lights of Galesburg shone 
over the flat fields; and the horse, sensing the 
nearness of the stall, obeyed more readily his 
pleading. They entered the town by the way 
which the farmer of the afternoon had foretold, 
turned into the long, unmistakable main street, 
and drove half its length to the livery barn. With 
hurried steps he walked along the sleeping street 
until he came to the old Union house. He awak¬ 
ened the clerk and followed his lantern up the 
stairs and down the hall to the dingy room which 
was opened to him. The clerk lighted the lamp, 
brought in water for the guest, and departed 


QUEST 109 

grumbling, for David in his abstraction had taken 
no notice of him. 

He threw off his coat, sat down at the table, 
and spread paper before him. Thoughtfully, he 
whittled a pencil to a long point and began to 
transcribe the diagrams which had been written 
in his mind during the ride. He sat at the table 
drawing until the lamp’s limited oil had run low 
and all his paper had been covered with pictures 
and calculations and then leaned back in his chair 
and sighed in joy and weariness. He recognized 
the immensity of the task before him and was 
at once appalled and spurred on by its challenge. 
Again he took up his pencil, but he saw that the 
light would soon be gone. He folded his papers 
and walked toward the bed. 

Midway in the floor he stopped, concerned 
with that other phase of his undertaking. Edith 
—would she see as he had seen; would she under¬ 
stand the greatness, the necessity of this thing? 

Once more came over him the anguish of un¬ 
certainty. All depended on her; all came from 
her; only through her could any of it be realized. 
Without her all was futile, transitory; without 
her he could not go on, could not even begin. He 
sat on the edge of the bed and clasped his fore¬ 
head in his hands. There dared be no wavering, 
no failing now. She must understand; she must 
see, must give herself as he was giving himself. 


no QUEST 

His confidence returned. She would see and 
would be willing. All would come in its hour; 
and for the present— Once more his vision 
burned in his mind, and, as he saw the engine 
which he built to her, he felt no longer the dry¬ 
ness of his tongue. He had at last a way of 
showing her; he had a language through which 
he could speak with all his fervor I 


XI 


T OWARD the middle of a Sunday after¬ 
noon, only a little more than a week later, 
David appeared on his second visit to the 
Warren house. The air was warm and unstirred, 
and throughout the grove lay a heavy silence. 
On the porch the father sat in shirt-sleeves in 
drowsy comfort. There was no one else in sight. 

The two men sat together. Warren asked 
David if he had enjoyed himself at the party. 
David replied that he had. There was a lapse. 

“The wheat looks better every week,” David 
ventured. “The opinion seems to be that it will 
run to thirty bushels.” 

“Yes,” said the old man, with a slight drawl, 
“they say that, but I doubt if it runs that high. 
There wasn’t enough rain along in April and 
May when we needed it. But the worst of it is 
we don’t get anything when it does run high. 
They ought to increase the tariff against Canadian 
wheat.” 

“The chances for that seem pretty good with 
the Democrats split up as they are. Did you 
notice McKinley’s speech?” 

“Yes. Good speech. I take it you are a 
Republican.” 

David nodded, having chosen his party after 

hi 


112 


QUEST 

the long-used principle of governing his life by 
the contrary of that of his father. 

“Good. I could never understand Henry 
Crosby taking in this Populist chaff. Now Bryan 
and free silver’s his hobby. Sixteen to one, six¬ 
teen to one, till I want to throw him out of the 
house.” 

David was not following him. His mind had 
gone back to one of the drawings on which he 
had toiled during the week, flashing upon the 
solution which had baffled his toil. He felt a 
restlessness for pencil and paper difficult to 
suppress. 

“This country’s getting sick of politics and poli¬ 
ticians,” Warren went on, “in a little while they’ll 
be so bad that we won’t notice them more than 
once in four years.” He paused. “Politics don’t 
help to grow corn, anyway.” 

“Nor to build engines,” David added involun¬ 
tarily. 

“No, that’s right. We seem to agree on a 
good many things.” He was evidently a man 
much pleased by agreement. “Are you by chance 
a church-goer?” Warren pursued his inquiry. 

David roused himself uneasily. “I never have 
been, though sometimes I’ve tried to be,” he said, 
struggling with his thought. “But I never felt at 
home. It didn’t seem to get me anywhere, or to 
get anywhere itself. I can’t explain it. Women 


QUEST 113 

seem to get something out of it. My mother 
did.” 

“Yes, that’s the way it is here,” said Warren, 
less reverently. “Ma trots off every Sunday with 
the girls, or I think it’s Edith trots with her and 
Ruth, to the Methodist chapel nigh here, but I 
don’t take any stock in it. Ever read Ingersoll?” 

“No.” 

“You ought to do it, sir. He comes pretty 
near the right thing. I went to see him once 
when he was living in Peoria. Fearless, out¬ 
spoken fellow, he is; I wished he’d come West 
again. I like to talk to Ma about him,” he 
chuckled. “It bothers her a good deal. But we 
go our ways, as far as that is concerned. For 
me there’s enough religion in following a plow.” 

David glanced upward and saw Edith, dressed 
in white, standing just outside of the doorway. 
How long she had been there he could not tell, 
though, from her smile and the slight, hurt frown 
which contradicted it, he believed she had over* 
heard most of what had been spoken. Her father 
caught her smile too and said no more. David got 
up, annoyed and curious, but in her greeting she 
gave no relief to his suspicion. Awkwardly he 
stood in front of her. 

“Let’s take a little walk,” she proposed, and, 
as they strolled away through the grove, he ob¬ 
served the same smile, now free from hurt, to 


play upon her lips, and saw how archly she 
regarded him. 

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked dejectedly. 

“A little bit; but more at Father. You saw 
how quickly he stopped when he saw me there—it 
was because he thought I would tease him, maybe 
even before you,” she replied. “Do you want to 
know a secret? Do you want to know why he 
agrees with Ingersoll?” 

“I suppose it’s because he thinks Ingersoll is 
right.” 

She cast her eyes down. “I don’t think it’s that 
at all. I think it’s only to have an excuse, when 
he’s looking over a field of grain, to keep from 
having it bring him any question but how many 
bushels to the acre it will bring. I am not teasing 
now. It makes me very sad. And I’m afraid 
you are like him—not exactly though, for you 
would be honest with yourself.” 

David was perplexed. “Your father is very 
admirable,” he began. 

“In every way but that.” Her voice became 
lighter. “I also heard him laugh at Mother for 
going to church; but I can laugh more at him 
than he does at her—it’s the only way one can 
touch him. Imagine finding religion enough in 
following a plow, with your feet stumbling on the 
clods and the reins sawing at your neck and your 
mind on nothing but keeping the horses going 


QUEST ii S 

straight and the plow pointed into the furrow. 
It’ s as bad as it would be to find religion enough 
in selling an engine, isn’t it?” 

“I’ll admit it isn’t very poetical.” 

“Nor very religious.” 

“Do you think,” David asked slowly, groping 
uneasily, “that there could be any religion in build¬ 
ing an engine—I mean, in building it new, out of 
your own head, and putting it together with your 
own hands?” 

She glanced at him as if she had not compre¬ 
hended what he had said. David hurried on¬ 
ward, fearing what she might answer if she spoke 
before he had explained himself fully. He was 
building an engine, he told her, would in the end 
build a factory, and the factory would live after 
him. He began to describe the engine with a 
completeness of trust which he could have be¬ 
stowed on no one but her. He told her first of 
his new clutch, with which the design had started, 
then of his proposed arrangement of boiler-tubes 
and flues, his placing of the gears, his means of 
tightening the valves of the steam chest, his ideas 
about cross-heads and eccentrics, and so down ta 
the cleats for his drive-wheels. He spoke, regard¬ 
less of her ability to follow him, with an enthu¬ 
siasm which took from his voice its frequent 
hesitancy and from his manner all trace of awk¬ 
wardness. Edith, observant of all about him. 


116 QUEST 

noticed this, and was touched by his enthusiasm 
and his fluency; but at the same time in her heart 
there grew a strange anxiety. 

He stopped and waited for her response; but 
she did not speak or raise her eyes to him. They 
had come in their walk near to a trellised opening 
in the dense shrubbery at one end of the grove. 

“Let us go in here. It is my garden,” she said 
simply, and led the way. 

Closed off except for this one opening in a 
wall of uncut privet, the garden which they 
entered possessed a nun-like seclusion and an inti¬ 
macy wherein her mind was written in clean paths, 
in mild sweetness of smell, and bewilderment of 
color. David was silenced and looked about him, 
as if, through the sudden transition of the arbor, 
he had been placed in an enchanted world; but 
its enchantment could not altogether bind him 
while his own thought held him so thoroughly. 

“Tell me, Edith, don’t you think it will be 
line?” he persisted. 

“I don’t know,” she answered, musing. 

“Why not, Edith? Don’t you think I can do 
it? Don’t you understand?” 

Edith seated herself on a bench recessed in the 
hedge. 

“I understand your earnestness, at least,” she 
began. “That is fine—finer, maybe, than you 
know. You have made me feel a little of it and 


QUEST 117 

made me think for a moment I understood some¬ 
thing that I know nothing at all about. But—” 

“But what?” he implored. 

She turned to him, her brows slightly con¬ 
tracted, and her soft voice tremulous, as if 
touched with foreboding. 

“It frightens me, David.” 

“It—” 

“Yes, frightens me. Do you know what you 
are doing?” 

“I am building a steam engine,” he affirmed, 
still invoking her blessing. “Don’t you believe 
I’ll be able to do it?” 

“Yes, I believe you will be able,” she said, low¬ 
ering her eyes, and speaking with the same uncer¬ 
tain slowness, “but I wonder what good it will 
do you.” 

He hesitated, perplexed at her uncertainty. 
“Why, that hasn’t anything to do with it,” he 
said finally. “The engine just has to be built, 
that’s all.” Again he pondered. “Perhaps, it 
won’t do me any good. Perhaps, it can only be 
begun in my time. But, don’t you see that I can 
give my life to it and have something to give to 
those who come after me? Don’t you think it is 
fine to hand down something like that?” 

“A steam engine is such a strange thing to give 
one’s life to,” she answered softly and turned 


ii8 QUEST 

her face away from him, so that he could not 
see it. 

There was a silence. David breathed with 
pain the faint perfume of the garden in which 
they were sitting. Words crowded ill-sorted to 
his tongue, but in his confusion and disappoint¬ 
ment were useless. All that he had said had 
been futile; he dared to say no more; yet he could 
not abandon his attempt or endure the lack of 
her sanction and her praise. 

“The engine is not all,’’ he pleaded. “It is only 
a part, a small part. Perhaps, some day I can 
show you.” 

She looked up at him, vaguely smiling. “Per¬ 
haps you can. I wonder,” she said slowly. 

They gazed at each other, searching, hoping, 
fearing. The ringing of the bell called them to 
the house. 


In the days which followed, Edith endured a 
disquiet of mind which, as her smile had been, was 
vague and uncertain alike of its origin and its 
intent. She permitted herself no questions about 
David, whether or not she loved him, whether 
even she liked him, for she knew she could not 
have told and would only have been the more 
distressed. Neither did she dwell greatly upon 
that ideal of his, which he had evolved so sud- 


QUEST 119 

denly and embraced with all his strength, for, in 
the timorousness of her mood, she felt that it 
meant nothing to her, was, perhaps, beyond her. 
Frequently, sitting alone in her garden, his words 
came back to her; but more vividly she recalled 
his ardor for this unknown thing. As when she 
had heard him speak, she felt the warmth and the 
power of that enthusiasm, and felt also the vague 
fright she had expressed to him, though that 
became more obscure than it had been at its awak¬ 
ening in her. She would look down at the ground 
and smile and then lift her eyes dreamily to the 
sky above the green wall, but her placidness did 
not still the tremor she had felt. Her spirit was 
like the water of a quiet stream which, meeting the 
backwash of a river, retires and eddies unsurely at 
the first touch of the current to which it is irre¬ 
sistibly drawn. She waited, and on another Sun¬ 
day David came again. 

Walking expectantly among the trees of the 
grove, she saw him come into sight from within 
the screen of the two cornfields. David called, and 
she waved her hand and came to meet him, stand¬ 
ing by the gate while he tied his horse. After he 
had made fast the knot, he glanced shyly at her 
and, reaching to the buggy seat, brought forth a 
box of candy tied elaborately with a blue ribbon, 


120 


QUEST 

blew from it the dust of his hot ride, and laid it 
on the ledge of the gate in front of her. 

Then came upon him the awkwardness which 
he felt at the idea of giving her anything, and it 
seemed to him that he must apologize for his gift. 
“I happened to see it in a drug store; and I 
thought maybe you’d like it.” 

Edith laughed, patted the ribbon and, leaning 
toward him, placed in his buttonhole a sprig of 
mignonette which she had carried in her hand. 
“I happened to pick this when I was in the gar¬ 
den,” she mocked him. 

She opened the gate, David came through, and 
they walked together across the yard. 

“I went to church this morning,” David soberly 
announced. 

“Did you go, or did you happen to go?” 

“Well, I got in town a little early, and I was 
walking by, and so I went in.” 

“Did you notice what church it was?” asked 
Edith banteringly. 

“Yes, I noticed that before I went in,” David 
affirmed, although actually he had not made the 
discovery until he came out, “it was the First 
Methodist. The preacher was a young fellow, 
but pretty eloquent, nevertheless.” 

He seemed to observe a sudden brightening of 
her eyes. 

“Oh, I know who that was. That was Law- 


121 


QUEST 

rence Cartwright. I’m very fond of him. He 
comes out here frequently. He and Father have 
great arguments.” 

They did not go to the garden but, instead, 
rested in chairs which had been taken from the 
porch and placed under the motionless trees. 
Edith spoke at length about the young minister. 
David was silent, slowly rocking his chair on the 
uneven ground. “I think you would like him,” 
she concluded her eulogy. 

“I don’t know as we would appeal much to 
each other,” David mumbled. 

“You almost did meet him,” Edith went on. 
“I tried to get him to come to the party at Mar¬ 
tha’s; but he doesn’t approve of such things, espe¬ 
cially of dancing. He scolded me for going.” 

“He had no right to do that.” 

“That’s what I told him. He has very con¬ 
fused notions of what’s right and what isn’t, like 
most such people. All the same, he’s a very 
amusing scolder.” 

She paused and looked directly at him, as if 
for the first time aware of his discomfort. 

“What is the matter, David? Have you had 
trouble with your engine?” 

“No, the engine’s all right,” he insisted, not 
meeting her eyes; but his wretchedness would 
not permit him to speak more. 

Edith smiled mischievously. “Would you like 


122 QUEST 

to hear something else about Dr. Cartwright?” 
she asked. 

David shook his head. “I don’t know as I 
would.” 

“I shall tell you anyway, though you do not 
care about it. He is eloquent sometimes, as you 
said; and I have learned a great deal from him. 
But he lacks earnestness and courage. Father 
can silence him so easily I do not even pity him. 
He would not give his life for anything, not 
even for an engine.” 

“You are laughing at me. You care nothing 
at all about the engine.” 

“Perhaps so. I may even be a little jealous 
of it. But I do care about what you are doing. 
It is you who are saying unkind things now.” 

“Not because I mean to,” he said quickly, and 
then after a pause, “Edith, I’ve got a compen¬ 
sating gear that I think beats anything ever made. 
You see, the bevel teeth will be half shrouded; 
and this will strengthen them, and prevent their 
breaking by tying them together, like webbed 
feet. The shroud and the compensating gear 
will be faced off true and the two faces put so 
close together that it will be impossible for any 
dirt to get between them.” 

Edith listened, amused at the jargon of this 
impulsive outburst with its extravagant assump¬ 
tion in her of a mechanical intuition. But though 


QUEST 123 

her laugh silenced him, it did not reassure herself; 
and she retired into the uncertain thoughts which 
had filled her week. She perceived, as she had 
previously, the strength of his impulse; she was 
struck now by its wildness, by its lack of con¬ 
trol, or consideration; and again came the vague 
feeling of fear, for herself or for him she could 
not have told. She turned to him, seeing the 
eagerness in his eyes and the tenseness in his long 
fingers. Then she turned away, wondering at this 
tenseness, this utter absence of repose, and felt 
wearied by it. 

She responded indifferently, though she knew 
her coldness hurt him, though she had no wish 
to hurt him. After they had gone to the house, 
she was silent and let her father control the con¬ 
versation to his desire. David spoke with effort 
and looked continually at her, perplexed and un- 
happy; but she could give him no relief. 

As they left the table, she heard her father 
say with a friendly pat on the young man’s shoul¬ 
der, “Next time, sir, make this your stopping 
place. You can catch your train here at our 
station in the morning just as well as you can 
in town.” 

She was startled at her father’s words, which 
seemed to press a fate she might yet wish to 
avoid, and felt a frown pass over her forehead. 
Then she relapsed into her indifference and was 
uncertain as to whether she was pleased or not. 


XII 


T HROUGHOUT the warm summer, she 
saw him regularly, heard regularly the pro¬ 
gressing story of his labor; and there came 
to be something engrossing in his accounts, so 
that she would ponder over them after he had 
gone. Oftentimes, recalling the alienness to her 
of what he had said, she smiled to think how she 
could have endured to listen, yet when he came 
again she listened without thought of endurance, 
until at last she ceased to smile at herself for 
doing so. 

In her imagination she could see him, when the 
drab routine of his day ended, bending transfig¬ 
ured over his table, puzzling, calculating, drawing 
furiously, or, as he had stood before her, with 
his voice impassioned over stay-bolts and turn- 
buckles, his face serious and intent, his mind too 
fully enthralled by his dream to admit doubt of 
its greatness. She marveled at his absorption, 
at his fervor, at his patience and thoroughness, 
which did not kill his fervor; and she wondered 
what it was that could call forth all this. A 
steam engine remained a strange, an unholy thing 
to which to give oneself with such abandon. 

She tried to think that the engine was not all, 
that it was a symbol, a means rather than an end 

124 


QUEST 125 

—he had insisted many times that it was not all 
—but the rest was undefined. Though he had 
spoken no word of love, his repeated coming,, 
his confidences, his anxiety for her sympathy and 
faith, his despairing jealousy told well enough of 
the existence of his love and the need which he 
felt to guard it. Yet surely all his fury could not 
have been for her—she required no steam en¬ 
gine. 

More than that she did not permit herself to 
inquire; and her emotion became buried deeply 
within her, so that she was hardly aware of it. 
At times, listening to him, or thinking of him 
after he had gone, she would feel a reflection 
of his ardor and a desire to be carried away as 
he was; but she was not aroused for long. What 
she experienced most was this feeling of wonder, 
this fruitless delving into his motives; and, later, 
came a feeling of solicitude and of fear, for him 
alone, for the thoughts of herself, and of the 
hopes and longings and questionings which had 
disturbed her before his coming sank into forget¬ 
fulness. She saw the strength of his passion and 
the unrestraint of his service to it, and knew that 
it would wear him out. 

The grain grew yellow and was harvested, the 
corn tasseled, the fruit ripened and fell; and she 
heard that the first part of his work was com¬ 
pleted. The engine was designed, and David 


126 QUEST 

was confident of its perfection. There remained 
the search for money with which to build it. 
Edith rejoiced for him, thinking the end was 
near, only soon to realize how far away the end 
really was. 

As time passed, she noticed how his enthusiasm 
showed itself only in the inertia which kept him 
grimly at his task, how worry overspread his face 
and a dogged expression displaced the eagerness 
in his eyes. He spoke no more of the engine, 
but sat in moody silence, poorly responsive to her 
attempt to lighten his mood, or spoke impatiently 
of the pigheadedness of bankers and the obduracy 
of committees. He began to come less frequently 
to her; then during three weeks she saw him not 
at all. 

One evening she sat with her father, keeping 
him company at his late supper after a day spent 
in town. He had said that he had some news 
for her, and then tauntingly forebore to tell it 
until he had finished with his soup. 

“Well, what do you think,” he began, “our 
young friend Bullard has invented an engine. I’d 
always thought before that he was a pretty sober 
fellow.” 

“No, he was never sober,” she said half-aloud, 
and then in reply to her father’s disappointment 
at the flatness of his surprise, “He told me about 
it quite a while ago.” 


QUEST 127 

U I suppose he did,” Warren rejoined, a bit 
grumpily, “but why should he want to do it? 
He has a good place where he is and the confi¬ 
dence of his company. There’s no reason why 
he should not climb to the top in it. Why does 
he want to do this—risk all he has, or might 
have?” 

“I don’t know exactly,” said Edith, trying to 
answer what she had been unable to answer to 
herself, “but I believe it’s something like our 
grandfather coming on here when he could have 
had his father’s farm in Ohio. The other engine 
means nothing to him; but this one is his own, 
created from his own mind. It’s to him as the 
new lands were to your father. Working on it is 
like a religion to him, like your plowing.” 

Warren smiled beneath his beard. “I shouldn’t 
think you would have much faith in it.” 

“I have, though,” she said quietly and turned 
her eyes away. In a moment, she turned again 
to her father, her face intently serious: “Tell me, 
where did you hear about it?” 

“At the bank meeting. Two men came up 
with drawings and this and that, trying to inter¬ 
est us. I gather he is having a pretty hard 
time. People seem to think there’s already en¬ 
gines enough.” 

“But this isn’t like the other engines,” said 
Edith with sudden warmth. She leaned toward 


128 QUEST 

him clasping her hands upon the table. “It will 
be lighter and useful for more things. It will be 
strong enough to drive a thresher and fast enough 
to be some good on the road. You could use it 
for plowing and trucking and a lot of other work 
the old ones aren’t much use for. It would be 
cheaper to buy and cheaper to run, so that almost 
any farmer could have it, where now half a dozen 
have to club together. I don’t see why it shouldn’t 
be a worth-while thing.” 

“You talk better than they did at the meeting,” 
said Warren indulgently. Then his smile passed 
into a concerned frown as he observed his daugh¬ 
ter more closely. Edith sat looking down at her 
hands. He thought her hands were very white, 
and he saw that the color was gone from her 
cheeks. 

“Has no one helped him?” she asked. 

“No, I think not.” 

“If the bank did help him, others would, 
wouldn’t they?” 

“Yes, it would help to have any sort of start. 
But I’m afraid the bank won’t do anything unless 
somebody backs their loan, and no one wants 
to risk that.” 

There was a pause. 

“David wasn’t at the meeting, was he?” 

“No.” 

“Would he know that you were there?” 


QUEST 


129 


“Not likely.” 

Entreating, she raised her eyes to him. “Then 
you risk it.” 

Warren laughed and then again was impressed 
by her tenseness. “My dear, that is a good deal 
to ask,” he said affectionately. 

“I know. But I know also how much it means 
to him, how he has worked for it, how it might 
kill him if it were not given to him. What others 
may do is nothing to what he has risked. And 
I know the engine is good. I have faith in him.” 

Warren laid his large hand lightly on hers and 
bent over the table toward her. “Tell me, Daugh¬ 
ter, do you love him?” he asked. 

There was a short silence, and then Edith, 
without glancing away, replied, “I think I do.” 

Her father stroked her hand and sat back in 
his chair. “Well, he’s a good young man. But 
I’ve got little enough opinion of this fellow Donne 
who was up here. However-” 

“When is the next meeting?” asked Edith, 
pressing his vaccilation. 

“They wanted us to come in next Saturday.” 

“David won’t be there?” 

“I don’t think so. We wondered why he 
wasn’t along to-day; but they said he was tied 
up and couldn’t get away.” 

“I’ll drive you to town.” 

Her father smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll see 



1 3 o QUEST 

what can be done. The young man’s not bad; the 
engine may be some good.” As he got up from 
the table, Edith followed him anxiously with her 
deep eyes. “Remember, he must know nothing.” 

She carried her father’s dishes into the kitchen 
and then went out of the house by the kitchen 
door and ran through the trees to her garden. 
There she dropped into a bench and looked up 
at the black sky. The night was chill, but, though 
she had no wrap, she did not feel the cold on 
her white arms. 

Horror possessed her. Quavering, she be¬ 
held the engine, a monster mercilessly crushing 
David; and with equal horror, she saw how, 
through her, this monster would come into exist¬ 
ence, how all that would come from it must be 
laid to her. Yet its existence had to be—David 
needed it, must have it, or perish from not having 
it. There was no escape. Dead or living, it had 
them. Her lips parted and a groan arose from 
her agitated heart. Whence had this thing come ? 

On Saturday she drove her father to town and 
waited, busying herself with errands, until he 
could tell her that the loan was assured and that 
he and the other men were going away with the 
committee for a final conference on Sunday. 

With heart heavy in her joy, she was walking 


QUEST 131 

back to the place where the horse was tied, when, 
at the crossing, her startled eyes beheld David 
walking in another direction, head down, bag in 
hand, with a resolution in his steps which caused 
people to give way to him as they passed. He 
had not been at the meeting, she knew, and she 
wondered what had brought him, and what was 
sending him so resolutely away. 

She called his name; and he stopped abruptly 
and turned about. His face was white; and his 
displeasure at being caught by her showed plainly 
in it. 

“Were you going to the station, David Bul¬ 
lard?” she demanded when she came up to him. 

“Yes,” he replied gruffly. 

“You were going out of town without trying to 
see me ?” 

“I came to town to see you.” 

“Then why-” 

“Because—it’s nothing—” His eyes looked 
down the street and then again upon her. “Oh, 
Edith, I’ve been tramping the whole state this 
week, trying to get what they won’t give me at 
home, money for the engine; and I couldn’t find 
any. I started to come to see you because I was 
too weak to stay away. But now I’m going away 
again. I can’t see you now.” 

“Why?” 

David hesitated and avoided her gaze. “I 



i 3 2 QUEST 

can’t say. You wouldn’t understand. You must 
let me go.” 

She said nothing, of the all she had at hand 
to transform his humor. “Why shouldn’t I un¬ 
derstand? Why shouldn’t you want to make me 
understand?” she insisted. “Come on out to the 
farm with me, won’t you, David? I’m ready to 
go now, and the horse is waiting over here by the 
square. You are tired, that’s all, though you do 
not know it.” 

David wavered. He stood facing her, scraping 
one foot restlessly on the pavement. 

“You’re coming?” Edith asked. 

“Yes.” 

He turned about and followed her to the public 
square fringed with vehicles along the encircling 
tie-rail. He helped her into the buggy; and, 
while he loosed the horse, she took the reins into 
her hands. When he came to get in, however, 
she moved so that he should have the driver’s 
seat and gave the reins to him. 

David accepted the place without a word, al¬ 
though he wished that she had kept it and had 
done the driving herself. He was being taken 
by her, and wished to make no pretense of taking 
her. His defeated will chided him: he was sure 
that it would have been better for him to have 
gone away. He could not talk because he was 
too weak to talk and because he was ashamed 


QUEST 133 

of himself besides. Edith looked sadly and ten¬ 
derly at him. Her heart was torn with many 
conflicting feelings; and her voice was still. 

Thus they drove silently along the flat road, 
for most of the way allowing the horse to walk, in 
order to keep from disturbing the heavy October 
dust. 


XIII 


A FTER supper that evening David went alone 
into the parlor, dropped carelessly on the 
sofa, and frowned down at the floor. He 
was bewildered by the frailty of his resolution, 
bewildered also by the upheaval of emotions 
which threatened to grow beyond his control. He 
saw that his will was gone, that he was in a situ¬ 
ation of which he was not the master, felt his mind 
reel in its vague swirl, felt his rebellious heart 
push strongly against the tangle of his mind. 
When Edith came into the room and sat down 
beside him, her presence permeated him with 
painful sweetness; and the touch of her hand 
soothingly on his tore him with impulses as in¬ 
tense as his desire, so that he felt he could endure 
no longer. 

She seemed to be offering herself to him—at 
least there seemed to be nothing which would 
prevent his taking her. But he drew some strength 
from the quaking knowledge of his weakness and 
withheld himself. It was not as he had planned 
it; it was not as it must be; and, therefore, it 
could not be. 

“Do you know what you have done?” he asked 
hoarsely. “Don’t you realize that I’m not my¬ 
self?” 

134 




135 


QUEST 

“Yes, I know that, David.” 

“Then why did you bring me out here?” 

“Because, you wanted to come. Isn’t that 
true ?” 

“Yes, I’ve wanted to come for days,” he ad¬ 
mitted, “But I ought not to have come; and I 
would not, if I hadn’t met you, never. I would 
never have let you see me while I’m this way.” 

“That is foolish, David. You ought to have 
come the more quickly—you owed it to me to 
come, if you trusted me, for it is only in trouble 
that friends can really show their friendship. 
That is why I wished you to come. I thought, 
perhaps, I could help you.” 

David shook his head. “Not that way you 
could help,” he mumbled, “It isn’t trouble that 
bothers me—I’ve had plenty of it before. I don’t 
mind that; but what is dreadful is to come to 
you like this—without certainty, or hope of cer¬ 
tainty. It was in another way I wanted to come. 
Then I might have spoken as I can’t think of 
doing any longer.” 

“Why, David? What difference do you sup¬ 
pose any of that could make? Have you thought 
I didn’t care for you?” she asked, trying to catch 
his eye. Her voice had a playful tone incompre¬ 
hensible to him. 

“I had no right to think one way or another 


136 QUEST 

until I had asked you. But it wouldn’t matter 
now.” 

“It wouldn’t?” 

“No. You’re tormenting me. You know I 
haven’t been able to get the engine started.” 

“You told me that in town.” 

“Edith,” he broke forth in anguish, clenching 
his hands on his knee, “it’s been nearly two months 
now—almost as long as it took me designing it. 
That committee the banks at home got up have 
done nothing but drag, and drag me with them 
until I’ve been nearly mad. I’ve given them 
everything they’ve asked for. They’ve put me 
off, and I’ve waited; but they’re afraid and will 
never move. I’ve been to half a dozen towns this 
week. But it’s no use. Everyone’s afraid. It’s 
terrible, this fear, this complacency. This unwil¬ 
lingness to risk is terrible. But it’s got me; I 
don’t know where to turn now.” 

“And for that reason you weren’t coming here 
any more?” she asked, refusing to comfort him 
with the secret certainty that was in her heart. 

“You don’t realize all that the engine means.” 

“You said once you were willing to give your 
life for it.” 

“Yes, and without it my life’s worth nothing.” 

“Surely there is more in life than steam en¬ 
gines,” she said with quiet scepticism. 

He paused, frowning uneasily. “There is, but 


QUEST 137 

it’s all bound up together so that if I lose part of 
it the whole thing’s gone. I can’t make you un¬ 
derstand.” 

“No, you could never make me understand 
that.” 

For a long time they were silent. Then Edith 
stood up and, bending over him, surveyed his pale, 
worn face, and smiled once more, tenderly, rather 
than playfully. “You are tired, David, more 
than ordinarily tired. Why don’t you go to bed 
now—and then to-morrow we shall have all day 
to make each other understand.” 

He arose after her. They turned out the lamps 
in the parlor and with lighted candles went into 
the dark living room. At the foot of the stair¬ 
way they parted, Edith pressing his hand as she 
left him. He stood watching the shimmering 
blueness of her dress in the candle light until she 
was gone, and then he went into a bed room on 
the first floor which had been made ready for 
him. For a while he lay trying to bring some 
order into his thoughts; but the comfort of the 
bed and the weariness of his body were stronger 
than any thought, and his torment faded easily in 
sleep. 


Morning found him much refreshed, his worry 
faded, his hope, to his own wonder, revived. At 


138 QUEST 

breakfast he was cheerful; and the eagerness 
with which he received an offer to accompany 
mother and daughters to church was so great that 
he saw that Edith felt him insincere. While the 
others were dressing, he harnessed a horse to the 
surrey and then waited, impatiently, reins in hand, 
for them to come. 

They came at length, and, with Edith in front 
with him and her mother and Ruth in the seat 
behind, he drove as he was directed until they 
reached the country chapel, an unadorned build¬ 
ing of red brick and white shingles, with a belfry, 
which raised itself timidly above the roof, and a 
graveyard in the clearing at the back. 

Already the congregation was gathered and 
waiting in the open air before the church. In 
chirping groups beside the door the women clus¬ 
tered, clothed with as great drabness as the brown 
trees, and with a primness peculiar to no season. 
The men stood in voluntary separation from them 
near the well-lined hitching bar, talking, whit¬ 
tling, and looking not altogether comfortable in 
garb more formal than overalls. Facing their 
stares, David tied the horse at the end of the bar 
and walked back to the immoderately curious 
group with whom he had left Edith and her 
mother and her sister. “Edith Warren’s new 
beau,” he heard whispered and was annoyed to 
have his presence forcibly made known to him. 


QUEST 139 

The extended introductions to which he was sub¬ 
jected by the mother topped his embarrassment, 
till he felt his hands grow larger. 

The ringing of the bell brought him relief. 
The men from their asylum near the horses be¬ 
stirred themselves, brushed off their clothes with 
their wide palms, and joined their women. Chil¬ 
dren were called from subdued play by the road¬ 
side or among the carriages; and family by family 
the congregation went into the chapel, to pews 
unlabeled save by habit of long use. The mother 
Warren placed herself between her daughters; 
David followed, on the other side of Edith. 

The service was as plain as the building in 
which it was held or the people by whom it was 
attended. They stood to sing—when David held 
Edith’s book and listened to her voice, though his 
own would not rise—and bowed their heads to 
pray and sat back in wooden comfort to listen to 
the sermon. The preacher, a white old man in 
black clothes, in appearance and spirit a survivor 
of the earlier prairie preachers, with voice quav¬ 
ering with ardor,’ like a coal flaming in its own 
ashes, began to speak abruptly, gravely impressed 
with his message: 

“Now that our grain is threshed and some of 
it already sold, and our corn is gathered, and the 
land stripped of more wealth than we shall use 
in three winters, let us be reminded of the words 


i 4 o QUEST 

of Paul, written to the Corinthians, at the end of 
the fifth chapter of his second epistle: ‘For the 
things which are seen are temporal; but the 
things which are not seen are eternal.’ ” 

David noticed the gleam which came to Edith’s 
eye when the text was announced, as if she had 
caught from it some peculiar aptness, and he saw 
how the soft line of her brows straightened pen¬ 
sively, how she became immersed in herself, fol¬ 
lowing her own thoughts rather than those which 
were offered to her. Fingering the pages of the 
hymnal, David made effort to follow the old 
man’s words; but the engine was again alive in 
his mind, and its lure unconsciously drew him 
away. At length he caught himself, when it was 
too late to regain the thread of the discourse, 
and, abandoning the effort, he looked toward 
Edith and let his eyes dwell on her serene, 
thoughtful face. Again he felt wonder and rev¬ 
erence toward her. There seemed in her to be 
something beyond the touch of decay, something 
removed from his world and above it, beyond his 
attainment and his understanding. He gazed at 
her and then reproached himself for the flights 
which he had allowed his fancy to take. In his 
world, such fancy, dangerously like poetry, was 
as likely to be considered a deformity as it was 
anything else, and he was willing to accept the 
taboo which was put upon it. 


QUEST 141 

When the service was over, the worshippers 
departed as they had come, family by family, in 
carriage after carriage trotting away in four di¬ 
rections from the corner at which the chapel 
stood. Leaving Ruth and her mother to drive 
alone, the two walked the mile or more back to 
the house, not by the road, where the dust would 
have covered their shoes, but across a close- 
cropped pasture and through a wood strewn 
thickly with dropped leaves. 

Edith stooped to break off the head of a stalk 
of goldenrod. 

“Did you like the sermon?” she asked. 

“Yes, it gave me a thought.” 

“About what we were talking of last night?” 

“No.” He glanced dubiously at her. “Why 
that?” 

For a moment she hesitated, and then she be¬ 
gan, with a slight tremor in her voice. “David, 
are you sure you are doing right in giving yourself 
so entirely to the engine? Can’t you see that it is 
as temporal as the grass or the corn, that it is 
as material as the metal it is made of, that it’s 
liable to failure now, as you fear, or any time 
after it is started? Can’t you see that you’re 
trying to make eternal something that is more 
perishable than life itself?” 

“No, you mustn’t say that,” he begged, hiding 
most of the terror which her words gave him. 


i 4 2 QUEST 

“It can’t fail once we get started—if only once we 
get to the market—” 

“David, there is no material thing which is not 
subject to dissolution,” she continued, pleading 
hopelessly. 

“Perhaps. But it is only by means of the ma¬ 
terial that the other things can be attained. The 
material things must come first.” 

“That is what all of our people believe. But 
even if that is true, it is wrong to become so ab¬ 
sorbed in the material things that our eyes do 
not see beyond them to the ends they ought to 
serve. It’s like your saving the man in the river, 
when the mere work of the rescue kept from you 
the meaning of what you were doing.” Looking 
up, she caught his puzzled frown, and tried to 
smooth it with her smile. “I didn’t let you tell 
me the thought the sermon gave you,” she apolo¬ 
gized. 

“It—it’s no matter. Maybe, some time I’ll try 
to tell you.” 


When, in the late afternoon, they were sitting 
alone in the garden, brilliant in that bare season, 
with astors and chrysanthemums and tall cosmos, 
he drew his brows intently and endeavored to 
find expression for his thought. 

“You are like this garden, Edith, always 


QUEST 143 

blooming,” he ventured, endeavoring to relay in 
words the glowing insight which the morning had 
granted him. “The time of the year, or failure 
or success, all seem to make no difference to you, 
while I’m tossed, as you found me yesterday, by 
every change of wind that strikes me. What is 
it, Edith?” 

Edith smiled quietly. “I am not at all like 
that, though I should like to be. Perhaps, though, 
if we could always see what feeble things our 
joys and sorrows are, how close they are to¬ 
gether, and how easily they pass from one to the 
other—how, really, we never have one without 
the other, we might be able to be that way. But 
we usually see very little beyond the thing which 
holds us for a moment.” 

“No, Edith, you are that way,” he re-asserted, 
disturbed by a vague familiarity in what she had 
said, bringing a transient recollection of the ferry¬ 
man, whom he sought to forget. “That’s what I 
was thinking of during the sermon, that you were 
steadfast, unalterable. I can’t think of you fad¬ 
ing, or changing, unless it be like this garden, 
trading one beauty for another.” 

She smiled at him, and then her smile passed. 
“If it is so, it is nothing—nothing that you could 
not possess, if you cared to have it. But it isn’t 
worthy of you. I am frightened by things and 
creep to the edge. There is no credit in standing 


144 QUEST 

there where all is quiet; but there is something 
in being able to handle oneself where the current 
is swift. That is where you always are, David. 
I saw it first when you saved the man’s life. You 
didn’t have to think what to do, or ponder on 
what you were doing. You knew what was neces¬ 
sary and didn’t hesitate. I think it was the same 
thing that made me trust you so easily when you 
said you would find little Betty that time in the 
woods, though that was nothing in comparison. 
It will bring you success with the engine—and it 
might gain for you other things.” 

“Do you really think the engine will be a suc¬ 
cess?” he asked fervently. 

“I have faith in you.” 

There was a pause. David turned to her as if 
to speak, and then shifted his glance from her 
face to the ground. 

“Oh, I wish I could be sure of that now!” he 
whispered. 

“Of such things one can never be sure.” 

Even now she gave no hint of the surety she 
knew to exist, but leaned back silently, watching, 
in no great calmness herself, the swift alternating 
of his expression between desire and despair, 
whose betrayal he did not know. The day died 
out, and the garden became hidden in a hazy 
dusk. 

David shook his head. “If I only knew what 


QUEST i 45 

awaited me when I get home to-morrow, one way 
or another. It would be some help.” 

Edith said nothing. He looked up to her face 
and thought it serene, for in the twilight he could 
not discern the trembling of her lip or the mois¬ 
ture in her eyes. 

“I wished to come to you with promise and cer¬ 
tainty,” he went on, turning his face away, strug¬ 
gling with the passion he could not hide entirely 
nor could even wish wholly to hide, saying words 
he hardly heard. “I wanted to come; but I can’t 
come farther until I have all that and I dare not 
ask you to wait for—” He had in his mouth, 
“what is useless to go on without,” but Edith in¬ 
terrupted him. 

“Why wait, David?” 

“The house must be built before you can move 
into it.” 

She sighed, and raised her shoulders appeal¬ 
ingly. “Oh, David, I would help you build it. I 
have called you brave and unfaltering, but it 
seems that I am less timid than you. I would 
brave anything, and you ask me to wait. I have 
waited, and you only ask me to wait longer!” 

Her restraint was broken and even the sem¬ 
blance of composure gone; and her voice rose with 
the sudden loosening of emotion. “You are sell¬ 
ing your life for the engine. You will get it, be¬ 
cause you have set your mind upon it, have bound 


146 QUEST 

the whole world with you to get it. You will get 
it and have it for a time, and then it may pass 
away—yes, it will surely pass away. My love 
you could have forever, imperishably, and yet I 
must wait for a steam engine. Am I not more 
to you than that?” 

She looked at him sternly, almost defiantly; 
and turned away and bowed her head and raised 
her hands to her eyes. David met her look and 
dwelt upon her. A cloud lifted from his mind, 
leaving him in the brightness of freedom from all 
desires but one. 

“Yes, yes,” he whispered hoarsely, and with 
chained impulse released by her fervor, took her 
in his arms and held her tightly against him. 

Edith clung to him, sobbing. He bent his head 
over hers and breathed into the soft depth of her 
hair. Tears rose to his own eyes; and he was be¬ 
wildered, not knowing what to do. Then his 
heart melted, and his tears flowed freely. 

“Don’t, Edith, don’t,” he begged, and turned 
her head so that he could look into her face. “I 
love you, I want you, Edith. Believe that there 
is nothing in my life but you, nothing except what 
is for you. My engine is for you, Edith. With¬ 
out you I should never have thought of it, never 
have had a reason for building it; and without 
you I can never build it, nor want to build it. Do 
you believe me?” 


147 


QUEST 

“Yes, I believe you,” she whispered. 

“It is to you I give my life, not to the engine. 
It is through the engine that I give my life to you. 
All is yours, for you, everything. Do you be¬ 
lieve?” 

“Yes, I believe,” she repeated, then adding, 
“And what without the engine?” 

“Oh, Edith, I love you,” he murmured, and 
said no more. 

Darkness gathered around them and held them. 
Then, far off, they heard the bell from the house. 
They arose, stood for a moment, embracing, with 
lips pressed together, and then walked silently 
beneath the naked branches of the grove toward 
the yellow light of the kitchen. 


XIV 


T HE next morning they drove to the sta¬ 
tion, and Edith remained there until the 
train had come. As David was leaving, he 
caught her suddenly and kissed her again upon the 
lips. The train was moving; he jumped to the 
steps, turning so that he faced her. Edith smiled 
wistfully and waved her hand. He felt moisture 
come into his eyes and a peculiar choking sensa¬ 
tion rise in his throat, and he smiled back ten¬ 
derly. He watched her standing motionless on 
the platform until the train had carried him out 
of sight. Then he went inside the car and sank 
into the first seat to which he came. 

At once, by transformation too readily effected, 
his tenderness, his joyful desire were gone, and 
his mind, like his body, sank inert to that which 
came readily to hold it. His heart grew heavy; 
his chin settled upon his breast; and his arm with 
clenched hand reached out along the window sill. 
He suffered again the despair with which Edith 
had found him on Saturday, faced the fruitless¬ 
ness of his week’s traveling and the hopelessness 
of what lay ahead, and could discover no vista 
through the dark forest which seemed inescapably 
to encircle him. 

The thought of Sunday was torturing; and he 
148 


QUEST 149 

accused himself of folly and of worse than folly 
in the taking of Edith into his arms, which ap¬ 
peared now as nothing less than a violation of her. 
He had had no right to take her love or to ac¬ 
knowledge his; he was not worthy—not yet 
worthy. His heart beat dismally; and in the ex¬ 
cessive flood of humility he feared he should 
never be worthy. From a field, as he passed, a 
vertical column of smoke caught his eye. He 
looked through the clouded pane to see an engine 
at work, to feel the straining of the drive belt and 
the ceaseless breath of the wind-stacker. His 
mind was dull with anguish—it should have been 
his engine, his thresher. He stared at his failure 
and could raise his eyes to no other thing. 

At last he sat before his desk, fumbling 
through the accumulation of work heaped upon 
it, unable to hold himself to what he was exam¬ 
ining. A vague confusion of Edith and his en¬ 
gine filled his thoughts. He could not separate 
them, could not have one without the other, could 
not lose either. 


He became aware that someone was standing 
near him, awaiting his attention. He glanced up, 
saw Donne, chairman of the bankers’ committee; 
and, the sight of this personage bringing only the 
memory of disappointments and exasperations, he 


150 QUEST 

could infer no other possible bearing in his visit. 
With expression unrelieved, he motioned him to 
a chair. 

Donne was a tall, lank man with a pointed chin, 
a long nose, and sandy hair creeping from his 
temples before the desolating encroachment of 
baldness. His forehead, thus unnaturally high, 
exaggerated the sharpness of his features; and 
his eyes, despite whatever aspect of indifference 
he might have affected to assume, looked out ag¬ 
gressively above his spare, ruddy cheeks. As a 
dealer in real estate and as a promoter of various 
enterprises, all successful, at least to himself, he 
had among the men of the community a reputa¬ 
tion for great acuteness, a reputation which had 
caused his selection for the position in which he 
now confronted David. 

In this position, his business was not so much 
to investigate the merit of the engine—a matter 
of which he had been convinced from the begin¬ 
ning—as to wear the young man down by delay, 
to play with chilling uncertainty upon his impa¬ 
tience and his eagerness, to maneuver for advan¬ 
tage, but, above all, while doing this, to keep him 
from the extremity of transporting his project to 
a rival town. David’s unannounced absence had 
brought the fear of this calamity to such a point 
as to make Donne take the steps already de¬ 
scribed; and his present errand was to discover 


QUEST i 5 i 

the results of David’s journey, matching against 
them the outcome of his own. 

One less discerning than Donne could have 
observed from David’s careworn eyes and the too 
impassive expression of his face how little cause 
there had been for fear of his success. Donne 
saw all, and measured the length to which he 
might go. 

“ ’Morning, Bullard; been out of town, haven’t 
you?” he remarked by way of opening. 

David nodded. 

“On business in connection with the engine?” 

“No,” David lied, and then, with an irritated 
movement of his hand toward the papers in his 
desk: “Unfortunately, I can’t spend all my time 
with the engine.” 

Donne cleared his throat, bent his chin down¬ 
ward, and looked out with intended shrewdness 
from under his brows. “Well, while you were 
away, there have been several interesting devel¬ 
opments,” he began, tapping the end of his fin¬ 
gers together. Again he cleared his throat and, 
continuing, skipped any explanation of the de¬ 
velopments to which he alluded. “After the de¬ 
lay against which I have been fighting all summer, 
the committee has at last reached a decision— 
not as lenient, I regret, as I would have it, and 
yet, Bullard, I feel, deserving of some considera¬ 
tion, especially since it is not likely they will come 


152 QUEST 

to a more favorable one.” He coughed impress¬ 
ively. “It is in short this—the banks will ad¬ 
vance you, as a loan undertaken on your own 
responsibility, money enough to construct an ex¬ 
perimental engine according to your design. If 
it proves successful, which I, as you know, do not 
doubt—and for this reason urge the proposition 
upon you—you are given the guarantee that a 
company will be formed for its manufacture and 
the loan made to you assumed by the company.” 

David slowly raised his eyes and concentrated 
his dazed frown upon the promoter. What he 
had heard, he had heard vaguely. He paid no 
heed to the conditions, perceived no harshness, 
cared nothing for the ruin which would come of 
failure. He knew only that the engine was to be 
built. Donne was a benefactor and the commit¬ 
tee was worthy of whatever might be required of 
him. 

So the proposal was accepted as it was made, 
and its author, the astonished Donne, seeing the 
incredible ease of his victory, made no attempt 
to ameliorate it. For David the world vanished, 
and Donne along with it. The engine remained, 
paramount and alone; and he threw himself at 
once into its achievement. 

There were arrangements to be made with 
pattern shops, boiler shops, machine shops, foun¬ 
dries, tool mills. He set up his own lathes, his 


QUEST 153 

own forge, his crane, his hammers, for he had no 
idea but of following the work with his own 
hands. He was back to his tools; his spirit was 
buoyant, his energy awake and abundant and res¬ 
tive at any delay or distraction. He cast the 
world aside, and yet, with strange caution, he 
clung to it. He did not resign his managership 
or consider the possibility of resigning. He let 
his days as formerly be taken up with the routine 
of the office and in the night only gave himself to 
his more precious labor. 

To Edith, in whom at once he joyfully con¬ 
fided his undertaking, it first seemed incongruous 
that he should do this. She knew his enthusiasm 
and his impatience; she thought she understood 
his devotion to this ideal which she could not 
understand; she had pictured his cutting away of 
all ties and advancing fearlessly, even recklessly 
into the unknown. She questioned him. Wasn’t 
he only making it harder by wasting his strength 
on alien things? Was there need to consider 
any conseqquence but that of which he spoke with 
such assurance? Wouldn’t it be better to trust in 
himself and his labor and leave all the rest be¬ 
hind? But her questions, she saw, upset him 
without provoking answer. 

“It is not time yet,” he would say frowning, 
and go on in the way which he had set. 

Edith was silent, dwelling on his sentence, and 


154 QUEST 

in it at length she believed to discover a vague 
desire for balance, a fear, perhaps less vague, of 
excess, of the abandonment of intoxication. Her 
discovery, much as she believed in its truth, she 
saw, however, was at best half a truth. If he had 
an instinctive desire for restraint, he had also 
impulses whose strength could thwart such con¬ 
trol; and in seeking to avoid intoxication, his ex¬ 
cess became the greater, for his engine possessed 
him entirely and the other became but so much 
added weight dragging upon him. 

Edith saw this, and in this second discovery 
her detachment ceased, and her love and anxiety 
grew, knowing that, although his exertion was 
boundless, his strength could not be infinite. She 
listened to the recital of long nights in the ma¬ 
chine shop, of rivalry in labor with a faithful 
mechanic named Berg, of the glorified tedium of 
machining and tooling, and the more arduous, 
more colorful work of assembling the parts which 
had been prepared; and she sighed and turned 
away, with a shudder, recollecting that her doing 
had made this possible, and that, in the end, his 
exhaustion must be laid to her. There came that 
twinge of foreboding which from the first had 
been aroused by the engine. Why must this be? 
What could it bring to him, to her, or to the 
world that should repay such a cost as his 
destruction? 


QUEST 155 

Then followed other emotions. Her responsi¬ 
bility was great. She could not let him be killed. 
She could not let him be taken by this thing for 
which she had no love. And turning again, she 
saw how he was sitting, in silence, with muscles 
relaxed and whole body in unconscious rest, how 
he started from his lapse with renewed show of 
vigor and freshness, and she saw too how real 
was the cause of her fear. 


One winter night, a little ore than two months 
after the beginning of the engine, they drove in 
one of Warren’s sleighs across the prairie whit¬ 
ened with new snow. The moon, shining over 
their shoulders, lighted coldly the smoothed ex¬ 
panse of frosted landscape; and from the win¬ 
dows of solitary, drift-banked houses crept out¬ 
ward through shivering trees a warmer glow, as 
contrasting to the other as the chill of the wind 
in their faces to the warmth of their bodies wrapt 
together by heavy blankets. The creak of the 
runners on the gleaming tracks of pressed snow, 
the tinkling of the harness bells, sounded pleas¬ 
antly in their ears. The wind passed in a high- 
pitched whisper. Otherwise the countryside was 
quiet. 

David’s right hand, resting on his knee, firmly 
held the reins; his left pressed with equal firmness 


156 QUEST 

upon the mound in the blanket beneath which lay 
folded Edith’s hands. With an enwrapt expres¬ 
sion, inscrutable from the uncertainty of the 
thoughts which prompted it, he looked into her 
face, showing very white in the moonlight; and 
then with a worn smile he turned away and moved 
his hand to his own lap. His mind flooded dizzy- 
ingly with longing, weary for satisfaction. 

“I love you,” he murmured. 

“I am ready,” Edith whispered. 

There was a pause. 

“You know the risk I have taken?” 

“It was taken for me, you said. I ought to 
bear it with you.” 

He shook his head. “The reward is for you, 
not the danger.” 

“I should be unworthy of the reward, if I had 
not shared the danger.” But for herself she cared 
for neither the one nor the other, seeing the hag¬ 
gardness of his eyes and hearing the deep tired¬ 
ness of his voice. 

“You know how I shall be ruined if I fail?” 
he went on. 

“You said you could not fail.” 

“No, I cannot,” he said with sudden resolution. 

Again there was a pause. 

“I believe you don’t want me,” said Edith, 
drawing herself away from him. 

He drew her back, frightened by her small 


QUEST 157 

show of resistance, and held her against his side. 
“No, it is not that,” he answered frowning, “but 
—you know how little time there will be?” 

“Hush. Our mothers and grandmothers did 
not fret at being left alone when it was necessary 
that they should be left that way, no matter how 
dreary or difficult the absence was. I am the same 
as they were. Besides, David, I am alone now, 
when you are not here, and I should at least see 
more of you than now. And I’d be where I could 
make things easier, more comfortable for you. 
You are growing tired, David.” 

“I can never become tired. The most of the 
work will always be yet to do.” 

“We shall always work together then.” 

David looked at her with his inscrutable frown. 
“You know what it means?” 

“I think I do,” she answered, and her smile 
was confident and her brow placid. 

Another silence intervened; and, when David 
spoke again, his voice had returned to that mum¬ 
ble which held it when his motives were clouded 
or at variance with his judgment. 

“You are brave, Edith, to wish to go with me.” 

“I am anxious only to be going. When shall 
it be?” 

“You must say.” 

“After New Year’s, then.” 


158 QUEST 

So they were married; and Edith returned with 
David to the house which he had got for them. 

In this new relation, David was ill at ease, for 
he knew that it had come out of its order. He 
loved her fervently, could even pause in his hur¬ 
ried meals to look adoringly at her, would have 
been desolated at losing her, and yet he could not 
enjoy her fully because of the lack of effort she 
had required of him to gain her and he could not 
prevent his irritation at what he regarded an ex¬ 
cess of solicitude for him. He did not feel fatigue, 
and he could not remit the slightest from the 
intensity of his driving, and, from her visible 
anxiety, her dubious feeling toward the engine, 
and her pleadings for moderation, he turned to 
his faithful Berg, whose subservience and eager¬ 
ness tuned better with his own intent. 

Besides Berg, there was now another helper. 
David’s intoxication filled both; the three worked 
feverishly together, and no night was lacking of 
the sound of their toil. The patterns were long 
since finished and the castings completed. The 
forgings and the brass fittings had been sent from 
St. Louis. The cylinders and the gears were 
mounted; and the gauges, the valves, and the gov¬ 
ernor were delivered piecemeal and set into place. 
Gradually the giant grew up before them; and the 
pneumatic hammer sang prophetically as rivets 
were forced into its sides. David watched its 


QUEST 159 

growth and marveled at its beauty, and his joy 
grew along with the unfolding of his dream. The 
tooling, the hammering, the adjusting, the bolt¬ 
ing into place went on, night after night. Finally, 
the band-wheel with its shining rim was slid to 
its lodging; the new clutch, ready adjusted, 
strained to justify the idea from which all had 
been conceived; the front wheels were wedded to 
their axles and the guide chains affixed; the great 
drive wheels with their gears were added; and 
the engine, let down from its jacks, stood pride- 
fully by itself. 

On the night when this last had been done, they 
had labored even later than usual; and, with the 
engine standing finished, its few, scattered pol¬ 
ished surfaces glistening against the shadows of 
the shop, its black sides bulging with its mystery, 
they could not wait. From the stack at the head 
of the boiler to a back window of the shop a flue 
was hastily improvised. Coal was heaped upon 
the untarnished gray iron of the grates and the 
first flames crept upward from the firebox. The 
three workers stood in wordless suspense with 
eyes fixed to the pressure gauge, while its needle 
mounted with unpitying slowness. 

At length the steam was let into the cylinders; 
the piston-rod pushed heavily forward; and the 
flywheel, beginning to move, flashed more brightly 
than the shop lanterns which gave it its light. 


160 QUEST 

Mad with his joy, David leaped to the platform 
and thrust out the clutch lever. The shoes 
gripped tightly, the wheels crunched on the wood 
floor; and the improvised flue clattered down, let¬ 
ting the room to be filled with smoke. David 
stopped. The doors and windows were flung 
open wide and the flue remounted. The engine 
lived! 

For the first time, upon David the weariness of 
months descended. He parted from his helpers 
at the shop door and staggered through the first 
hazy light of a March morning. The streets were 
quiet, as if belonging to a town deserted, and his 
footfalls reverberated dully in his ears. Block 
after block he walked, with eyes half-closed, fol¬ 
lowing his way mechanically, hearing only his 
steps. 

He came near to his own house. In his fatigue 
he was filled with tenderness. Edith was asleep 
and must not be disturbed, he thought. How 
patient she had been, how enduring of the neg¬ 
lect she had suffered from him, how worthy she 
was of a devotion nobler than his and of a reward 
greater than he could give her! 

Then came other thoughts. The engine was 
built. He frowned—now, filled with his triumph, 
would have been the time for being married. The 
factory would come next, and then the rest— 
though that too might now come out of its order. 


QUEST 161 

He shook his head. Order mattered not so much 
since he was to have everything. He must have 
everything, have the whole scheme, in its entirety. 
Edith was ready; she had said she was ready; 
yes, she must be ready. It was time for her part 
now. 

Softly he opened the door and stepped within 
the house. Instead of going up to his bed, he tip¬ 
toed into the living room, took off his shoes and 
his coat, and carelessly draping a blanket around 
him, lay down upon the couch and was at once 
asleep. 


XV 


W HEN Edith, for the dozenth time awak¬ 
ing, found her husband still absent from 
her side and, in his place, the dawn creep¬ 
ing upon her, she arose with heart burdened and 
attired herself for the morning. 

Coming downstairs, she discovered David 
asleep on the couch where he had thrown himself 
an hour before; and, though she stepped quietly 
into the room, her step awakened him. He sat 
up, unwrapping the blanket from him, and looked 
toward her with a heavy smile. 

His face was contorted by its deep, blackened 
furrows of weariness almost beyond her knowing 
him. It frightened her, and she took a step back¬ 
ward in her fear. 

“David!” 

“What’s the matter?” he asked thickly, “did 
I wake you up? I was afraid I would.” 

“No, I was awake. I could not sleep with you 
away.” She glanced apprehensively at him and 
then came and kissed his grimy forehead. “You 
are well?” 

“It is finished,” he answered, as if that were 
proof enough of what she asked. 

“It is all finished? And it runs?” 

“Yes. It’s all right, so far as I can see. A 
162 


QUEST 163 

little adjustment, maybe, but nothing important.” 

Edith’s eyes brightened. 

“Oh, that’s splendid. Now you can rest a bit. 
I wish you would go upstairs and bathe and spend 
the morning in bed. I’ll bring up something for 
you.” 

“No, it’s not time to rest,” he protested as he 
arose stiffly from the couch, but he went upstairs 
as she had wished. 

When, however, not long after, Edith came up 
to him with her tray, she found that his obedience 
had been far from complete. He had discarded 
his workman’s clothes, had taken his bath, but, in¬ 
stead of going to bed, was dressing for the usual 
routine of his day. His face appeared fresh 
again, and his good spirits had returned; and, 
while they had their breakfast over a small table 
in the bedroom, he told of the night’s achievement 
and laughed at his wildness in moving the engine 
backward in the shop, breaking the flue and the 
window. As soon as the breakfast was finished, 
he hurriedly left the house. 

He had parted from her at the door of the 
bedroom and had run downstairs so rapidly that 
she saw it was useless to follow him, to seek a 
second parting at the porch. She had walked to 
the window, watched him striding away down the 
tree-lined street until the corner took him from 


164 QUEST 

her, and then slowly had carried her tray to the 
kitchen. 

All this passed as in a daze; and now suddenly 
she was herself possessed with nervous excite¬ 
ment. The composure which was the fruit of her 
girlhood seemed to have been attained for noth¬ 
ing; the patience with which she had endured the 
last two lonely months had vanished. She was 
aware of the change in herself and laughed gaily 
at it. There would be a change in all things now, 
she knew, but did not feel with so great surety 
that she could wait calmly for it. She felt no 
calmness, but was all impatience, all eagerness, 
expectancy, anxiety. Her work was finished too 
soon. Time dragged. She busied herself with 
this and that, going intermittently to the front 
window, hoping that he might be brought to her 
despite his stern schedule. Early, though, she 
came to acknowledge that no amount of change 
could bring so unnatural an event to occur; and 
she tempered her restlessness as best she could, 
still unsatisfied with herself, still feeling the in¬ 
sufficiency of all she did. She made ready for 
supper the foods which she had learned he most 
liked; she arrayed herself carefully for his com¬ 
ing and, taking some sewing in her hands, sat by 
the window to wait for him. 

He came only with the night. His face showed 
weariness again, but his expression was open and 


QUEST 165 

smiling, free from the dark absorption which for 
weeks had held it. His joy was boundless, and 
he was voluble in his joy. Of his momentous day 
he told her. 

The committee he had gathered together as 
early that morning as had been possible and had 
taken them to the shop where the finished engine 
stood. He had fired it again, had backed it into 
the street, had run it up and down, backward and 
forward and in circles, had coupled to it wagons 
overloaded with coal and brick to prove that it 
could pull more than its own weight, had run it 
in the bottomless mud of the streets at the edge 
of the town—all with satisfaction. There were 
a few little things to be looked after and then, at 
once, other tests would be made in the country 
with plows and scrapers and threshing machinery. 
But the engine was real. There could be no worry 
any more. He longed for the tests, liked to see 
them try to balk him—there would be nothing his 
engine could not do. 

“And the factory?” asked Edith, who, to an 
extent, had come to understand the order of 
things. 

David glowed proudly over this last which he 
had saved for her. A company was already 
formed, and a factory would be built right away. 
The debt which had come from the making of the 
trial engine would, as they had promised him, be 


166 QUEST 

taken by the firm, and, besides, his salary had 
been dated from the beginning of his work. It 
was Donne he had to thank for that, a fine fel¬ 
low, Donne—would surely be on the board, and 
likely would tend to the financing of the concern. 
The mention of the name of Donne brought to 
Edith a recollection of her father’s judgment of 
the man. Her lips momentarily lost their smile; 
but her happiness was too great to suffer from 
a cloud so faint as that. 

Their supper grew cold while David talked; 
and when he had finished talking they sat silently, 
smiling at each other. They had no need for 
food. 

“You have resigned?” Edith asked. 

“Yes, the first thing to-day.” 

“We can take a little trip then?” 

He hesitated. “It seems a shame to go away 
now, just when I’ve got everything in hand. I 
promised you, and we’ll go, as soon as they get 
a man to take my place. I recommended New¬ 
ton. I’ve never felt right about superseding him.” 

“Why?” 

David glanced downward. “I don’t know. 
Before I did it, I thought it was going to be the 
great thing of my life. But when I met you at 
Henry’s that first time, I saw that it wouldn’t get 
me what I had to have. You remember that ride 


QUEST 167 

we took together? You never told me what you 
thought.” 

He looked at her from under his brows and 
saw she had turned a little to one side and would 
not likely answer. “Well, anyway, I’ll make it 
up to him now. I’ve promised to stay a month 
longer if it’s necessary for the old company to 
have that long to make their arrangements. In 
the meantime our own firm will be getting under 
way.” 

“And then we can take our vacation with a 
free mind?” 

There was a silence. “What do you mean by 
taking it with a free mind?” he asked curiously, 
as if he had only then caught her words. 

“Oh, just to be enjoying ourselves without 
being preoccupied with anything else.” 

David smiled with disappointment, as at the 
incomprehension of a child, and looked through 
the window to the dark evening. 

“You know I could never do that, Edith. I 
could never get my mind off the work until it is 
finished, and it won’t be finished for a long while 
yet. Once you’re in the harness, you can’t expect 
things to be easy.” 

“But even horses are permitted to rest.” 

“That’s the difference between men and horses. 
Men pull till they drop.” 


168 QUEST 

“There may be danger of dropping sooner than 
there is reason.” 

“Don’t say that, please. I’m not tired. I 
haven’t time to get tired. I’ll be all right in a 
day or two, when the other gets started.” After 
a pause, he added, somewhat impatiently, “We 
must not talk of tiredness or weariness or rest, 
because such talk can only unnerve us. We have 
seen only the beginning of the work. The most is 
yet to be accomplished.” 

“Oh, David, what is it all for?” she asked 
helplessly. 

He glanced at her with his tormented frown. 

“How can you ask that now?” he begged. 

She did not answer. 


They spent the evening together in the living 
room of their house; and, though a gas-log was 
all their fireplace could offer to dispel the March 
dampness, they sat worshipfully before it, watch¬ 
ing its nervously dancing jets of blue flame. In 
spite of his determination to be not so, David 
was tired; and he sat looking vacantly into the 
fire for a moment, possessed with a ,peacefulness 
he could not have felt had he been less near to 
exhaustion. 

As Edith, beside him, stroked his hand, which 
lay inertly across her knees, she looked steadily 


QUEST 169 

at his face, observing his unwonted calm and then 
seeing how his enwrapment became too great for 
calm. She knew that, in the deepness of the spell, 
he was unaware of her near by, since her steady 
look could not draw his eyes from the fire. Why 
was he so enwrapt, she asked herself; what grim 
vision did he behold in the thin flames—for his 
drawn mouth and narrowed eyes had told her that 
in whatever he saw there was grimness. What 
thoughts possessed him that could drive her from 
his mind; to what heights, or depths, did his 
dreams take him, on this night when she most 
wanted to have him for her own and to give her¬ 
self to him utterly? 

A feeling of loneliness came over her; and she 
felt sadly curious to know what strange creature 
this was that she loved and had married. The 
change she had taken for granted all day had not 
come; and there would come no change—the 
making of the factory would be the same as the 
making of the engine. Her old presentiment 
stirred faintly, like a bird roused in the night. 
She began to wonder what her life was to mean, 
how it was to be devoted. Was she merely to 
care for him so that he could last a little longer 
in this destroying work? Would no greater part 
than this be granted her? She glanced at him, 
but he told her nothing; and then her own eyes 
became enwrapt in the fire, and she ceased to 


170 QUEST 

touch his hand. A great heaviness lay upon her 
heart; a feeling of futility, of uselessness, sobered 
her, quenching the gay impatience with which her 
day had sparkled. So they passed the evening 
apart. 


Three weeks went by. David’s time was all 
taken with the ending of his old work and the 
beginning of the new. Twice he was away in the 
country supervising tests of the engine. Then 
there were imperfections to be repaired, patents 
to be thought of, articles of incorporation to be 
drawn up, buildings and equipment to be pur¬ 
chased. At length approached the last of his 
days in the old office. He put everything in readi¬ 
ness for his successor, removed his belongings 
from his desk, and prepared to surrender the 
managership. To his disappointment, his recom¬ 
mendation had not been acted upon, or, if at all, 
adversely. Newton was not to be restored. 

His misgivings returned. Disliking to leave 
Newton in the insecurity for which he felt re¬ 
sponsible, David succeeded with some effort in 
getting him placed as treasurer of the new com¬ 
pany. Grateful to his friend, Newton invested 
what he possessed in the company’s stock. David 
wished that he had not done this, but he did not 
prevent it. 


QUEST 171 

The mechanical problems of the new enter¬ 
prise, David’s most especial concern, were for the 
time being solved; the labor of managing, which 
he refused to relinquish, had not yet begun. The 
task of financing the corporation was at that mo¬ 
ment of all importance; and, by the old commit¬ 
tee, now acting as board of directors, was allotted 
to two members so prominent in David’s world 
that he considered their attachment an achieve¬ 
ment in itself. One of these was Henry Ruppert, 
president of a local bank, the other Jefferson 
Donne, the dealer in real estate. In questions 
of finance, he found them undisputed; his days 
in the town were not so many as to remember 
an ancient, dormant grudge borne by Ruppert 
against Donne, which might at some time be 
chafed into harmful vitality; he reposed full 
confidence in them and dismissed their share of 
the labor from his mind. 

The time had come for his holiday, and with 
a prick of conscience, he resigned himself to the 
promise he had made. 


XVI 


O N the eve of their departure, with their 
bags in readiness and their house prepared 
against a desertion of two weeks, they sat 
near to each other, going over their plans. The 
day’s Chicago paper was spread wide over their 
two laps, and they searched its pages for 
theaters and parks and museums and the 
other allurements for guideless travelers. Edith, 
hopeful again, was gay as she had not been since 
the time of his early visits to her father’s house, 
and she employed her gaiety consciously, to pre¬ 
vent his thoughts from reverting to the enthrall¬ 
ment from which she sought to rescue him. David 
gave himself freely to her mood. 

“These weeks shall be yours, Edith,” he said 
with a light-hearted laugh which came a little 
awkwardly from his lips, “and, because I’m such 
a poor hand at thinking up a good time, you shall 
run everything. What I’ll do will be just what 
you say.” 

Edith, too, laughed at his surrender. “I’d 
rather you’d be manager,” she said. 

“No, I’ve resigned that.” He glanced at her 
and was proud that she liked his jest. 

“Then we shall manage together,” Edith de¬ 
cided, and ran her finger playfully up and down 
172 


QUEST 173 

the columns of the paper until one item held it, 
“Oh, look, David, Joseph Jefferson is there again 
in Rip. The folks saw him when he was here one 
time years ago. We mustn’t miss that.” 

“We’ll go there tomorrow night,” David 
promised. 

“Do you suppose it’s too early to take a little 
trip on the lake?” asked Edith. 

“I don’t know, but we can find out as soon as 
we get there.” He was all agreement, all sub¬ 
mission, and he found pleasure in the uniqueness 
of the experience he underwent. 

“Isn’t it too bad,” Edith sighed, “that the 
World’s Fair didn’t wait till this year.” 

“Well, we can go out to where it was anyway. 
Some of the buildings must be left, and I can 
explain how it was when I saw it. It surely was 
great.” 

She drew herself up on the sofa, ready to listen 
—if he would speak, but it amused him to tease 
her with silence. “We’ll see it all together,” he 
put her off, and, looking at his watch, “Our train 
goes early. Maybe we ought to be getting to 
bed.” 

“This will be our wedding trip,” said Edith, 
smiling childishly, her deep eyes caressing him. 

“It will be, surely, though it seems now as if 
we’d been married always.” 

“Not always, but a very long time—two 


174 QUEST 

months at least. Isn’t it funny?” she asked, with¬ 
out knowing exactly what it was she thought was 
funny. 

They laughed, though, and then, rising to¬ 
gether, turned out the lamps and the gas fire and 
went upstairs. While they undressed, David was 
silent. He walked laboredly up and down the 
room, till, after a time, he sat down by an opened 
window and let his head fall in his hands. 

Edith, happening to face his way, discovered 
him in that attitude. “Don’t you feel well, 
dear?” she inquired. 

“It’s nothing. I seem to have got a little head¬ 
ache, that’s all,” he replied. He raised his head 
and slapped his hands down to his knees. “Don’t 
worry, I’ll be all right.” He got up, stood look¬ 
ing out of the window, and then turned to her 
with a concerned frown. “Did I ever tell you 
about my father?” he asked. 

Edith shook her head. 

“Well, perhaps I ought to, though it’s not 
pleasant to think of him, much less to talk about 
him. I don’t know what made him come to my 
mind just now.” 

Edith sat on the edge of the bed facing him, 
and felt her fingers tremble as she braided her 
hair. “I trust you, David,” she said assuringly. 
“There can be nothing wrong. So don’t speak, 


QUEST 175 

if it’s hard for you—not now, please. It could 
make no difference in me.” 

“Very well.” He turned away, frowning, and 
walked the length of the room. “I’m afraid it’s 
a bad time for me to be going away,” he remarked 
dully. 

Edith shuddered as at the appearance of a 
ghost believed safely banished. She wished to 
take him to her, embrace him, sing to him, do 
anything to distract his mind from its deep pos¬ 
session, but she stood helpless, knowing not how 
to approach him. “He is only tired,” she tried to 
persuade herself, and fell to repeating his own 
expression, “He will be well again by morning; 
he will be all right as soon as we can get away.” 
But whatever she could say brought no conviction. 

They went to bed; and, for a long time after 
David had gone to sleep, she lay awake, listening 
to his breathing, which had become rapid and 
heavy as if his body could not find sleep that was 
deep enough. Her fear alternately arose and 
then was stilled by the thought that they would 
soon be safely away. “If only we can get away,” 
she prayed, and, building the hope that in the be¬ 
ginning rather than in the end of the evening 
could her dreams be placed, she gradually fell 
asleep. Later, how much later she did not know, 
she was awakened. The room was quiet save for 


176 QUEST 

his heavy breathing. Presently he mumbled in 
his sleep, and she assumed that it had been earlier 
mumbling which had disturbed her. 

She rose on her shoulder, straining her ears to 
catch the half-distinct words. “There. Now slip 
it on. Hold it. Quick—a wrench,” she heard 
him say. Then, as the dream of the engine passed, 
his muttering grew lower in tone, and the loud, 
too regular breathing supervened. She lay 
awake, listening; and the interlude tortured her, 
for by his restive movements she could tell that, 
while his fantasy had changed, it had not ceased. 
Soon he began to groan, low and deep, in rhythm 
with his breath, as if each breath were agony. 
That stopped also, and for another moment he 
was still. Finally, his voice once more arose, 
clearly. “I’m a hopeless, miserable,” he began; 
and, before the sentence was finished, in a voice 
different, almost boyish in its violence, he cried 
out, “No, no, you’ll not touch me!” 

Leaning on her elbow, Edith bent over him. 
In the faint light of moon and street lamp his 
face showed pale. 

“David, David,” she called, and she gently 
shook him. 

“What, Mother?” he answered, and then 
blinking his eyes and staring at the frightened 
face over him; “Oh, it’s you, is it, Edith? How 
did you get here?” 


QUEST 177 

“I have never been away from you. What is 
the trouble?” 

He closed his eyes again. 

“Nothing. I was only dreaming,” he said in 
explanation, between long breaths. “It was noth¬ 
ing. You sounded like my mother.” 

Edith took his hand. It was hot and trembling. 
She touched his forehead and found that what a 
minute before had appeared white and cold was 
covered with perspiration. 

“The room is very warm,” he complained, 
“Are you sure the windows are open?” 

“Yes, dear.” 

“Are you warm, too?” 

“No. It was your dream which has made 
you so.” 

She got up, wrung out a cloth in cold water 
and placed it on his forehead. She lay down 
beside him again and took hold of his hot hand. 
In a little while he had returned to sleep and his 
rapid, heavy breathing once more arose to 
frighten her. 

Since her fear as she lay there in the dark was 
too great for her to consider what might be facing 
her, she rested with thoughts numb until the sky 
had lightened and the morning’s noises had begun 
outside in the street. Then, knowing that it was 
useless for her to remain longer in bed, she arose 
and quietly dressed in the clothes she had laid out 


178 QUEST 

for their journey, and pulled the shades over the 
windows to keep the day a little longer from com¬ 
ing into the room. She walked to the bed. David 
had not moved. She took away the stiffened 
towel and laid her fingers on his brow. It was 
moist no longer, but hot and dry. His cheeks 
were flushed with fever. 

For a while she stood over him, and though 
her heart beat calmly, its beating was audible to 
her. She drew a chair to the bed and sat down 
so that she could touch his face; and for more 
than an hour she sat there. How tired he was; 
how badly he needed to sleep, she thought. 
Glancing at the clock, she saw that there was no 
more time to spare in their preparations for 
going. She hesitated, uncertain what to do, and 
finally pressed his arm lightly. 

“David, are we going?” she asked, “it is nearly 
time.” 

He opened his eyes but seemed not to hear 
what she was saying or to be aware of what 
freedom the morning was to have brought them. 

“I’m burning. Please, a drink,” he begged. 

Edith brought him water and supported his 
head while he drank. “Will you have something 
more?” she asked, “I can bring your breakfast 
here.” 

“Nothing.” His head sank into the pillow and 
his eyes closed. 


QUEST tt79 

Seeing, now undeniably before her, all that had 
so long stirred her fear, Edith became more 
placid, finding the presence of the catastrophe 
less terrifying than the suspense of waiting for 
what inevitably must have come. She thought of 
the gaiety of their evening and felt it forced and 
incongruous, and smiled that she could have been 
so easily deceived by her hope. 

She glanced at their luggage standing ready 
near the bedroom door, sighed, took off her trav¬ 
eling clothes, carefully folded them away, and 
drew a house dress over her shoulders. She 
looked again at the china clock—a wedding pres¬ 
ent doomed to eternal exposure on the bureau 
because Bess had given it. 

Their train had gone. 


XVII 


A N hour later she stood at the foot of the 
r\ bed watching the doctor, whom she had 
summoned without consulting David, while 
he made his examination. David awoke, gazed 
sullenly at the physician, but submitted to his 
probing and answered his questions. When he 
went to leave the room, David beckoned Edith 
to the bed. 

“Don’t let anyone know I’m sick,” he begged 
with surly hoarseness. “Tell him no one is to 
know.” 

Edith went into the hall, where the doctor was 
waiting, and conveyed the message. 

“Assure him, I’ll say nothing,” the doctor 
answered. “Nothing must disturb him; every¬ 
thing must seem to be done as he wishes, because 
he needs quiet—repose, if that were possible— 
more than anything else. I don’t believe there is 
any great danger. His pulse is high and he has 
fever; but I’ve not discovered any organic symp¬ 
toms. We’ll watch that, however. The trouble 
is probably nervous, a sort of brain fever,” he 
continued, feeling his way. 

“Don’t be afraid to tell me,” said Edith, calmly 
earnest. “Is there danger ?” 

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “With 
180 


QUEST 181 

fever there is always danger. Here there seems 
to be nothing to do but to let it run its course. 
The danger will come from the rapidity with 
which it rises and from the height it goes to. We 
will try to control that, and hope that our control 
will be unnecessary.” 

He gave her instructions about what she was 
to do and promised to send medicine. Edith fol¬ 
lowed him to the door and then hurriedly effected 
a restoration of the sleeping kitchen to its func¬ 
tioning before she returned to the bedroom. In 
order to fulfill David’s wish, she kept the shades 
drawn at the front of the house and forebore to 
avail herself of a neighbor’s help. 

Throughout the morning she remained at his 
side. David was awake and asleep by turns, and, 
occasionally in his wakeful moments, he reached 
out and took her hand in his. She felt its uncer¬ 
tain pressure, and, noticing the frown, half-wist¬ 
ful, half-apprehensive, which recurrently clouded 
his expression, she remembered what he had 
called out in his dream and what strange allusion 
he had made to his father before going to bed, 
and she mused on that dark background which 
was unknown to her. But the present bore now 
more compellingly upon her than either what had 
passed or what was to come; she had only to hear 
his voice seeking her to cast her thoughts away 
without effort. 


182 QUEST 

David lay restlessly, his arms outstretched, his 
head uneasy on the pillow. He apologized for 
being ill and for spoiling her trip. Edith pressed 
his hand tighter. It was nothing. She had 
wanted to go away for his sake only, not for her 
own, and she was sorry he must wait a while 
before going. He must not think of her, for she 
was happy wherever they were so long as she was 
with him. This was not the way she would have 
liked best, but she did find some joy in at last 
being of help, of value to him. 

“Value,” he murmured, with the same light, 
vague frown, “your value is great—oh, I cannot 
say. You cannot know, Edith, how much. Every¬ 
thing is yours now, Edith, depends on you, every¬ 
thing.” 

Just before noon his temperature began to 
mount. He complained of burning and asked 
for water. Edith gave it to him, and for a while 
he was quiet, lying on his back with his eyes 
closed. Continuously she bathed his head and 
hands in cool water, hoping to assuage the burn¬ 
ing, but, as the fever grew relentlessly higher, she 
admitted the failure of her attempt. He became 
increasingly more restless in body; the expression 
of his face was ever shifting; and in his eyes, 
when rarely he opened them, she was dismayed 
to perceive the growing vacancy of delirium. 

Her helplessness appalled her, terrified her so 


QUEST 183 

that she feared to look back through the empty 
house; but she conquered her fear and clung to 
her strength from the necessity she had for it. 

An endless time went by. 

“Are you here, Edith?” David asked in a dry, 
hollow voice, without opening his eyes. 

“Yes, dear.” 

“Where’s the boy?” 

“There was no boy here, David,” she answered 
soothingly. 

“No boy here? Where has he gone then?” 

“What boy do you mean?” Edith asked with 
feigned calm, and took hold of his hand. 

“What boy? Why, our boy, of course, our 
son, Edith.” 

“But we have no son.” 

“We haven’t?” he repeated in a voice of 
greater harshness, “that is strange. We must 
have a son.” 

“David, please,” she begged, becoming more 
frightened. 

“I tell you I must see him. I have to know 
where he is.” 

“Hush. Perhaps he is coming.” She tried to 
cool his dry forehead with her hand. 

“Coming? Yes. Then I must see him. Bring 
him here now!” 

“I cannot,” she answered in desperation. 


184 QUEST 

“What are you saying? You know it will be 
many months.” 

“Months?” he echoed, torn with his delusion, 
“it cannot be months. Months is too long to 
wait. It will be too late then. The engine is 
ready and there is so much I have to show him. 
You must let him come in now!” 

Edith bent over him, pale with her fear, and 
held his head tenderly between her two hands. 

“Hush, hush, David. You are dreaming. Be 
quiet.” 

David stared hotly at her. 

“No, months is too long,” he cried. “Time 
—we haven’t enough time. The time is short. 
We have to hurry. Can’t you see everything is 
ready for him. We can’t wait.” 

His frown darkened the fever-red of his face; 
and he raised himself heavily as if to get out 
of bed. With all her strength, Edith seized his 
shoulders. 

“David, what would you do?” she demanded 
in terror. 

“I’m going to find him. I know where you’ve 
got him, there in that closet. You don’t want me 
to have him.” 

She kept hold of him with her hands. “No, 
no, David,” she begged, “he will come in time.” 

“Time,” David sighed and, weakly beneath the 
pressure of her arms, fell back upon the pillow 
and spoke no more. 


QUEST 185 

Edith trembled and sank into her chair and 
buried her face in her hands. Then she arose 
sadly and resumed her bathing of his parched 
face. An hour or so later, when the doctor came 
for his evening visit, she found difficulty in speak¬ 
ing. She told the history of the day, mentioning 
the occurrence of delirium and giving the time 
when the fever had reached its highest. 

She did not watch, however, while the doctor 
repeated his examination or pay much attention 
to what he was saying to her. After he had gone 
she tossed in her hand the envelope of powders 
he had prescribed and then placed them irrever¬ 
ently on the table. 


Although David remained unconscious through¬ 
out the evening, he slept more easily than he had 
during the day, as if his bad dreams were burn¬ 
ing out with the fever. After a meager supper 
in the twilight of the kitchen, Edith went back to 
the sick room and, drawing her chair to a partly 
opened window, refreshed herself in the gentle 
April air. She leaned upon her elbow, looking 
out, through the dark branches of an elm which 
brushed their walls, to the sputtering carbon of 
the corner lamp and the lusterless, yellow lights 
of the house beyond, feeling a sensation of utter 
loneliness creep upon her, like that which she 
had felt while she sat with David on the evening 


186 QUEST 

after the engine was completed, but more biting 
and more hopeless. 

She remembered how once she had told David 
that she was not afraid of being left alone, and 
she laughed miserably at her memory. She had 
not expected to be left in such loneliness as this, 
a loneliness beyond that which her mother or her 
grandmother had been forced to experience. 
Theirs had been a loneliness of the body; hers 
was now a loneliness of the heart and of the 
spirit which made the presence of the body 
intolerable. Sounds floated to her from below 
the bluff on which their house rested, the melan¬ 
choly whistling of river boats, the dismal chug¬ 
ging of a locomotive in a distant switch-yard. 
She listened to the wind in the new leaves near 
her window, to bits of talk from a neighbor’s 
porch and the clatter of hoofs on the hard pave¬ 
ment. She heard the night noises of the empty 
house and the heavy breathing from the bed. But 
from all she was lifted apart, weak and bewil¬ 
dered; and her heart was vacant. 

For the moment, all love was gone and bitter¬ 
ness flowed in every vein of her. She knew that 
the words David had spoken in delirium were 
more completely truthful than any he had spoken 
in consciousness. She had become aware of the 
depth of the thing which possessed him, of the 


QUEST 187 

remorselessness with which it drove him and of 
the brutality of which it made him capable. She 
saw at last clearly how she, like the engine, like 
David himself and the son which she was to give 
him, were all to be forced into a colossal me¬ 
chanical scheme which would make victims of its 
creators. 

She felt herself choked by a grasp she could 
not break. Was David no more than a builder 
of engines? Was she no more than a producer 
of men who should build more engines? Was 
life to be spent always in the service of engines? 
She wished to cry out against it all; but she could 
not, feeling the suffocating weight of a tyranny 
of whose existence she had till now hardly been 
aware—the tyranny of the dead over the living, 
of steel over flesh, of matter over the spirit. Her 
heart swelled in rebellion, and broke. All was 
dark. Her strength was nothing. 

Leaning upon the window sill, she gave up to 
the tears with which her sorrow and confusion 
filled her, weeping without hindrance until the 
sound of moving in the bed brought back the rea¬ 
son for her being in the room. With eyes still 
moist she got up and walked to where David lay. 
She could see through the dim light how his face 
with the look of bewilderment which overspread it 


i88 QUEST 

seemed as a mirror of her own heart. She thought 
suddenly of their first ride together, of how that 
same expression had shown itself then and how 
she had been disturbed by it. Again she was 
calmly wondering, seeking to understand where 
she loved. Surely the afternoon had not brought 
forth his true self. That had been something 
which held him, which possessed him but it was 
not himself, not the self she had loved and joined 
with her. 

She bent down to kiss his forehead, but, as she 
did so, her repugnance returned, and she with¬ 
drew and went to the couch at the other end of 
the room and there made her bed. She did not 
sleep, however, for the conflict within her was 
too consuming, perplexing her as much by its 
mere presence in her as from the matter out of 
which it arose. 


On the next day, David was visibly better. 
Though his fever was high during the hours of 
the morning, it began later to abate without start¬ 
ling suddenness or tendency to chill. Through¬ 
out the morning he slept, but in the afternoon, 
when the doctor came, he was awake and, dis¬ 
counting his faintness, in possession of himself 
again. 

For Edith the day passed as before; and, with 


QUEST 189 

the great fullness of her activity, she gave no 
moment to the tumult which had torn her night. 
The tumult, however, had not ceased, but moved 
subconsciously within her, showing in the dull¬ 
ness, the joylessness, the absent-mindedness with 
which she worked, going twice on the same er¬ 
rand, forgetting toward what her steps had been 
directed, and sighing too readily at her exertion. 
The doctor noticed how worn her face had grown 
in one day and, discovering that she had not been 
away from the house, insisted, as remedy for her 
pallor, that she go out for a walk. David, also, 
begged her to go; and when he renewed his 
entreaty after the doctor had gone, she acquiesced, 
ordering her hair in front of the mirror, and then 
walking, rather listlessly, down the stairs and 
through the kitchen door to the yard. 

Their yard reached to the edge of the bluff 
above the river valley; and, on the brink, below 
which the land fell away in a thicket of sumac 
and elder, sloping steeply to the roofs and trees 
of the lower city, she had begun the laying out 
of a garden, similar to the one at her father’s, 
but not so completely hedged, in order that the 
wide view of the lazily winding river might not 
be hid. She walked among her beds, but found 
little pleasure in them. The last of her bulbs 
were withering in a ragged patch, and her iris, 
which had begun to bloom, was suffering from 


190 QUEST 

its unseasonal planting. In another corner, how¬ 
ever, a few ambitious sprigs of pale green made 
her imagination leap forward to the colors of 
May. She began to plan—the rose shoots should 
be set in at once now that the weather was as¬ 
suredly mild—perhaps, there would be too many 
zinnias—the phlox could be increased in that 
place—the privet could be thicker in that, and 
probably a lilac bush should be added in the west¬ 
ern corner to cut off the sight of the street. 

She turned her eyes in the opposite direction, 
looking over the city and the river and the other 
bluffs beyond it; and while she watched the river, 
flowing out of sight in the haze of the valley, the 
haze seemed to creep up to her, gathering into 
it the distractions of the day as completely as it 
absorbed the landscape; and all that had been 
submerged since evening came to the surface of 
her mind. 

The violence of conflict she no longer felt—• 
she did not again doubt her love, dared not doubt 
it, for her life had come to be built too much upon 
it. What she was conscious of now was not the 
absence but the incompleteness of her love—her 
great loneliness, which she felt even more strongly 
than at the moment when David’s betrayed cruelty 
had made her aware of the vastness between 
them. Though she was tired, and possessed, as 
she thought, of little fortitude, she could not ac- 


QUEST 191 

cept this inadequacy as a final state, or, relinquish¬ 
ing the frail touch which connected them, seek in 
weariness the quiescence of disillusionment. She 
was wretched not from what she had suffered 
from him but because of what she did not have 
to the fullest. Her body yearned, yet desiring; 
her whole being craved the perfectness of union 
which had been denied her. Her eyes sought the 
house and the bed beside which she had stood in 
bitterness on the previous night. She was filled 
with longing and hope and anxiety. Her heart 
suddenly beat strongly, as if her desire had planted 
the reality in her mind; and she hastened back 
through the kitchen and up the stairs toward 
David’s room. 

At the door she hesitated, in the dread that he 
might repulse her; but she caught a look of tender 
waiting in his eyes, which met her, and was reas* 
sured. His expression changed as she came into 
sight; his relieved smile departed; a wavering 
frown remained after it. 

“Come here, Edith, and kiss me,” he said, and 
his voice in its soberness and its tenseness had the 
same uncertain quality that was in his frown. 

Edith went to him. “It is the beginning,” she 
thought joyfully. She bent down, and David 
raised his head slightly to meet her lips. 

“I had a queer feeling while you were outside.” 
he began when she had resumed her chair beside 


i 9 2 QUEST 

him. “A little after you went I happened to want 
a drink, and didn’t feel like getting it, and you 
weren’t here. I was going to call, and then I 
knew you wouldn’t have heard me. The house 
got big and I felt helpless in it; and then the big¬ 
ness went beyond, till I was floating about like 
dust. You were gone, far away, almost out of 
sight, the way the elevator at Chillecothe is when 
the valley is misty.” He paused and smiled in 
shame. “Really, Edith, I was afraid. I wanted 
you and was nervous for fear that you were lost 
or something had happened to you, though I knew 
you were all right. I had an awful need of you. 
You’ll forgive me. It was my weakness, I sup¬ 
pose. I never had that sort of feeling before.” 

Edith smiled and pressed his hand which he 
reached to her. “Surely, it is the beginning,” she 
whispered to herself, and said aloud, quieting 
him, “I have felt that way many times. It is only 
a proof of our love.” 

He slowly shook his head. “I don’t want that 
kind of proof. I don’t want to be that way. It’s 
weakness,” he protested, but held fast to her 
hand. 

For a moment he was silent. Then his frown 
showed a concern less vague while not less acute, 
and he said in a hushed voice, “Edith, I don’t re¬ 
member anything that happened yesterday.” 


QUEST 193 

“It is better so,” she answered softly, “you 
were very ill yesterday.” 

“Was I out of my head?” 

“Perhaps a little, in the afternoon and during 
the night before.” 

“Did I mention my father?” he asked quickly 
and seemed afraid of her answer. 

“No,” she replied, though to some extent she 
guessed how that mystery had borne on his de¬ 
lirium. 

“I am glad. You would not have cared to 
hear about him.” And much relieved, he sank 
back easily into the pillows. 

She brought supper to the room, and they ate 
there together. After the dishes had been taken 
away, he asked to have the evening paper read 
to him; and, sitting near the bed, she read until 
he had fallen asleep, breathing steadily and 
quietly. Then she folded the paper, shaded the 
light so that no ray of it would fall on his face, 
and walked to the window where she had spent 
the evening before. She seated herself as she 
had been then, rested her elbows on the sill, and 
looked out once more into the darkness in which 
was wrapt the city and the river. 

She tried to keep away the bitter thoughts of 
the previous night—they were futile and waste¬ 
ful, and her mind had no room for them. She 


i 9 4 QUEST 

wanted now to look ahead toward the fulfillment 
of the promise of the afternoon. It had been 
the beginning, she was sure; and she tried to 
work out means by which her desire might be ef¬ 
fected, knowing that not even love can achieve 
its ends without effort. She deliberated long with 
herself, trying to understand him, to discover 
how he was most easily touched, by what he was 
repelled, seeking the means by which she might 
be perfect in his eyes. 'Soon, however, such 
thoughts tired her with their fruitlessness and 
their paltriness, and she thought less of herself 
for having them. Still she could not see, could 
not find her way, and knew that for a while she 
must merely wait, must be patient. Patience itself 
was effort. 

A feeling of peace and resignation pervaded 
her, letting her without pain consider all that had 
been so recently torturing. Perhaps, she was even 
able to admit, her highest usefulness to him she 
loved did lie in the way his frenzy had implied. 
So could it be, though that alone had not been 
what she had planned, what she had desired and 
prayed for. Perhaps, David had been right when, 
long before, he had contended that the material 
must come first in the order of things, for she 
was willing now to allow the idea that the body 
must precede the spirit, as the vessel must be 
ready before the wine may be poured into it. 


QUEST 195 

Then the whole basis of her fear, of her bitter¬ 
ness and confusion was made plain to her: the 
dread of the process being incomplete, the hor¬ 
ror of body without soul. 

A moment more, peacefulness lingered, and 
then, with a quickening of her heart, her spirit 
fluttered eagerly against its dark thraldom. 
If David had furnished the material, the body, 
could she not furnish the spirit? As in the one 
was clearly his function, was not her function as 
surely in the other? She paused, and lowered 
her eyes before what seemed the ultimate ab¬ 
surdity. Could she give soul to the engine ? She 
smiled at her helplessness and at her pride of a 
moment before, and saw that she could not. No, 
if it were to come at all, it, like the rest, must 
come from David. Body and soul alike must come 
from him. And she? She was passive—but the 
receptacle and nourisher of what he gave to her. 
No more than that? Again, it was not as she 
had supposed things to be. 

She fought against the fate which she had ad¬ 
mitted for herself, seeing in it only tyranny and 
servitude. There must be more for her than that. 
But the yesterday still pressed its humiliation 
upon her spirit, taking the strength from her re¬ 
bellion. Once more she became resigned. She 
could but take what he gave to her; there was 
no avoiding of that; but—she was frowning pen- 


196 QUEST 

sivcly and speaking the words almost aloud— 
though she must be passive, must accept, could 
she not help in the choice of what he gave, inspire 
him, guide him perhaps? 

Turning in her chair, her eyes fell on David’s 
face; and, as she looked on him, her heart glowed 
with the longing which had awakened it in the 
afternoon. She recalled proudly what the doctor 
had said of his great strength and his surprising 
recovery—an iron constitution which would carry 
him through more than this. Another recollec¬ 
tion she found even pleasanter, that of the words 
he had spoken on her return from the garden, 
when he had found his own strength insufficient. 
It was his first approach to a confession of a power 
beyond himself, his first real admission of need 
or insufficiency. She grasped at that as the key 
by which she might penetrate and fill his heart. 
It must not be lost. 


The second morning brought still greater im¬ 
provement. David was impatient with Edith for 
bringing breakfast to him when he thought he 
should go down for it, and with the doctor for 
his decision that he must stay in bed another day. 
While Edith was occupied with the work of the 
house, he did not sleep, but with arms stretched 
on the coverlet and eyes open, staring beyond the 


QUEST 197 

ceiling, lay refilling his mind with the concerns 
which for two days had been absent from it. 
Edith returning, observed at once the change 
which was working upon him. 

“It seems as if I had been out of touch with 
things a long time,” he murmured. 

She did not speak. 

“It’s bad, being cut off this way,” he went on, 
“I can’t tell what may be happening. I’ve been 
holding out for a river front location, you know. 
There’s others who’ve been shouting to buy land 
north of town because it’s cheaper—can’t see be¬ 
yond that. I’m afraid they’ll be raising their 
ugly heads again.” He was silent for a moment. 
“I’m afraid about lots of things. That outfit’s 
all right for raising money, but if they dabble 
about, ordering material, they’ll finish us at the 
start. It’s likely to be a bad mess, Edith.” 

Edith smiled sadly. His world had become 
small again and her key was lost before she had 
had any opportunity to use it. With her hand 
touching the footboard, she watched him across 
the expanse of white spread, while his eyes be¬ 
came more concentrated on what she could not 
see. 

Once he glanced toward her. “There’s no one 
knows I’ve been sick, is there?” he questioned 
anxiously. 

She shook her head. 


198 QUEST 

“That’s good.” His gaze again went to the 
ceiling. 

Edith’s hand trembled, touching the end of 
the bed, and she feared her voice would tremble 
too. Nevertheless, she spoke. “There is still 
time for us to go away before you are expected 
back.” 

“No,” he said slowly, unaware of the emotion 
which was stirring her, “I have had my lesson. I 
should not have thought of going away. It’s 
been long enough now.” 

A few minutes later he turned his eyes to Edith. 
She was standing with her back to him, looking 
through the window which had been the com¬ 
panion of her two night’s vigil. 

“You have been wonderful,” he murmured ten¬ 
derly, and then added, with less distinctness, “but 
I hate to be this way. I hate to have you see me 
this way.” 

She turned around, resting her back against the 
wall, and looked at him again with his hands, 
large and tense, stretched on the coverlet. Their 
eyes met. They smiled, but they did not speak. 

Thus was their wedding journey ended at its 
beginning. 


XVIII 


I N a few days, David had returned, flinging 
himself into the work which he feared to 
have proceed without him; which he was, no 
doubt, chagrined to find not altogether interrupted 
by his absence. 

In the time that he was away, a factory build¬ 
ing had been rented for use until the new buildings 
were erected, and in it equipment was being in¬ 
stalled. More stock had been subscribed; an issue 
of bonds had been allowed; and the financing 
of the company, as it lay in the hands of Ruppert 
and Donne, seemed to progress with whole suc¬ 
cess. These two David continued to let go their 
way without interference, while all other phases 
of the enterprise once more he gathered into his 
own hands. He took the money as it was given 
to him and supervised its expenditure. He or¬ 
ganized the shop, the office, and the sales forces; 
he made frequent trips into the country; he kept 
close watch upon his rivals. By the middle of 
the summer—later than he had wished, for his 
impetuousness sought to give him part in the cur¬ 
rent harvest—manufacturing had begun, with de¬ 
liveries promised in winter and spring; and, al¬ 
though the time was not the best for their sales, 
the proposed output was got rid of with less diffi¬ 
culty than might have been expected. 

199 


200 


QUEST 

The idea of an engine which was lighter and 
more flexible in use had been sound, but, more 
than this, the land was giving bountifully of its 
produce, and the untired strength of the soil 
and its workers combined to produce more, until 
hands would not suflice for its gathering and 
machines and ever more machines were needed. 
David was laboring to answer that call with all 
the vigor he could command, the same thoughtless 
vigor of the soil which gave year after year its 
all without restraint, and without foresight of the 
exhaustion which must follow such intemperance. 
His illness was forgotten. He found in it no 
warning and took from it no lesson. 

Edith watched him, rather as she had on the 
days of that illness and during the days of sus¬ 
pense before, but with more calm and with care 
that her solicitude was concealed, for she had 
learned how he was irritated by it. She prayed 
that her fears were groundless; and, indeed, it 
began actually to appear that they were without 
foundation. When in the evenings she drove to 
meet him with their horse, whose purchase had 
been an early sign of their new prosperity, he 
greeted her with his kind of sober gaiety and 
seemed hardly more weary than at the beginning 
of their long day. His sleep was sound, his awak¬ 
ing without languor. All traces of illness were 
seared away by the ardor of his work. Edith 
came to smile at her old fears; and, supposing 


201 


QUEST 

her own relative weakness, she admired the more 
his strength and endurance. 

But with her now as one anxiety was quieted, 
another grew more strident, for she saw that the 
recovery for which she had prayed was making 
more certain the loneliness which grieved her. She 
saw that, as his confidence in his health and his 
strength was renewed, his application grew more 
intense and his absorption more complete. She 
observed the growth of his indifference and real¬ 
ized that the key she had lost would not be re¬ 
gained. 

With heavy heart, she labored to eradicate a 
fault which she believed to be her own, though 
every attempt that she could make seemed doomed 
to fruitlessness. What part could she play when 
no part was acknowledged to her? What inspira¬ 
tion could she give so long as another, unknown 
light kept his eyes from her? Feeling her impo¬ 
tence, she thought a little of going for help to her 
neighbors, to the older women whose experience 
surpassed hers; but she had only to look to be 
confirmed in her feminine distrust of womanly 
council and to be convinced of the futility of her 
hope, to see that the current of the town’s bust¬ 
ling society filled the women’s leisure with a scur¬ 
rying about which was as intense as their hus¬ 
bands’ toil, and which left them as thoughtless. 


202 


QUEST 

Edith cared in no way for its hurry or for the 
false relief it might give to her burdens, and, 
finding no comfort elsewhere, went back to her¬ 
self. 

Her neighbors, good-heartedly consumed with 
their duty to the stranger, at first took her retire¬ 
ment to arise from shyness and strove to pry her 
from her solitude; but later, when they saw that 
she was pregnant, they let that be her excuse and, 
save for frequent inquiries about her health, of¬ 
fers of help and suggestions for care of herself, 
disturbed her no more. From whatever cause, 
Edith was grateful that her desire was admitted, 
incomplete as that acknowledgement was. The 
intrusions, for such they remained to her, she pa¬ 
tiently accepted; but beyond that she could not 
at present go. She withdrew to her garden and 
longed for the privet to grow high enough to con¬ 
ceal her. 

The summer passed; and, as week after week 
brought no answer to her questions but seemed 
rather to carry her farther beyond the likelihood 
of answering, her heart grew sadder. In the se¬ 
clusion which her melancholy made her adopt, 
her days became much of one color. She arose 
early and breakfasted with David. With the as¬ 
sistance of the housemaid, another acquisition of 
their rising estate, the work in the small house 


QUEST 203 

soon was done, leaving the rest of the day at her 
disposal. The long afternoon thus given to her 
she spent either by the window of her room or 
in the shade of her garden. Sometimes she 
read, though not frequently. She usually kept 
some sewing in her lap, but she did not always 
sew. For long intervals she would sit with hands 
idle, book or work forgotten, her face turned to 
the sky, her deep blue eyes dreamily opened, hop¬ 
ing, longing, planning. Then at the end of the 
day, when the horse was brought to the door, she 
drove to meet David. 


Edith’s birthday, which came in October, was 
brought to her notice by the arrival of a parcel 
of gifts from her home. Otherwise the day went 
by as the rest of her days, and late in the after¬ 
noon she made ready as usual to bring David 
from the office. She got, however, no farther 
than the edge of the porch when she beheld him 
hurrying to her afoot, bearing in his arms a large 
bouquet of red roses. 

She walked down the steps to meet him; and 
her joy at his early coming and at his gift was so 
great that he was abashed by it. 

“You thought I’d forgotten,” he said in a hurt 
tone. 

“It was such a little thing to remember, dear, 


204 QUEST 

and you are so busy,” she replied, attempting to 
allay his hurt with a kiss, but David did not re¬ 
ply. She placed her arm in his, and slowly they 
walked around the house to the garden. With 
her other arm she held his roses close to her face. 

“Why are you silent?” she asked, “did I of¬ 
fend you?” 

“Offend me? No, you did not do that,” he said 
with a laugh. 

They sat down on a bench beneath a naked 
silver maple and brushed the crinkled, fallen 
leaves with their feet. In the garden a few asters 
still were blooming. 

“Do you remember,” he asked, after a pause, 
“how once you said that you were jealous of the 
engine. I didn’t pay any attention to it, because 
I thought you were making fun of me as you al¬ 
ways did then; but I’ve thought a lot about it 
since. Do you feel that way now?” 

“No, how could I, with such lovely roses?” she 
answered. The playful smile of her former 
tauntng rose to her lips, but David’s eyes, which 
were turned to the maple leaves and the frost- 
nipped asters, did not see it. 

“That is not what I mean,” he said, frown¬ 
ing slightly, “I knew you could not feel that way 
if you understood, but I thought maybe you didn’t 
understand.” 

Edith was looking thoughtfully away into the 


QUEST 205 

distance beyond the bluff. “There is something 
in the apprehension you spoke of,” she admitted, 
“but it is not from consideration of myself but 
of you that it arises. I have been afraid that the 
engine would enslave you and burn out your 
strength and destroy you. I do hate the engine 
when I think it could do that.” 

He shook his head. “No, you should not. Even 
if it did that it would be worth it.” 

She leaned her shoulder gently against his and 
raised her face to the sky as she was wont to do 
when she sat there alone. The full weight of her 
sadness and loneliness and helplessness came upon 
her. 

“But what is all this toil that drives you so, 
that threatens to waste you,” she sighed, “what is 
it all for? Is it to make us rich?” 

“No, it is not that, Edith.” He clung to the 
sound of her name, finding it more sufficient than 
any pet appellation. “We may be rich, but that 
is not the important thing.” 

“What is it then?” 

“Only to build while we live, so that we may 
leave something in which we can go on living.” 

“Go on living in an engine?” Edith mused, “is 
that to be our immortality?” 

“Yes, the only one that is sure.” 

“I am afraid that it is less sure than the other.” 

“There is no other.” 


206 QUEST 

She reached for his hand and earnestly sought 
his eyes. “I think there is another, and one we 
are less likely to lose than this, for of this we 
have no surety at all. I know that it looks sure 
now, in the days when everything seems granted 
to us; but, I can’t help but see, dear, that it is as 
fragile as ourselves who have made it. Think 
what even a fire might do, or the invention of a 
new kind of engine. What if our boy was not 
capable, or did not care, or should die? What 
if we have no boy, but only girls? What if some¬ 
thing should happen to Mr. Donne? What if any 
of that should happen?” 

“None of that can happen,” spoke David in a 
chilled whisper. “Why do you think of such 
things? Do you want them to happen?” 

“You can not believe that,” she said passion¬ 
ately. “You know that I have no desire that is not 
yours, that I care for nothing in the world beyond 
you, that I want only to be near you and a part 
of you. I am jealous of the engine, because it 
is keeping us from each other. It can die itself, 
and yet it is strong enough to destroy our love 
which could live forever.” 

Stricken by the hurt she gave him, David 
looked into her questioning eyes. His throat 
clogged; his heart ached with despair. He folded 
his arms about her shoulders and hotly kissed her 
unresponding lips. 


QUEST 207 

“I am building for you and your children. Do 
you not care for my gift?” he asked half-aloud, 
pleading through the dusk. 

And Edith replied, “I care for no other gift 
while I have you.” 

Still she did not understand; still he knew she 
did not understand; and they sat together while 
the sky reddened and grew dark, leaving them in 
the silent garden with faces white in the shadow. 
With one arm David kept her firmly against his 
side. 

“I wish I could talk,” he said after a while, in 
the same pleading voice, “but I can’t. I am 
dumb, Edith; the words do not form and my 
mouth goes dry. I wish I could make you under¬ 
stand. You are more than a wife, Edith, and 
you will be more than a mother when the boy 
comes; but, somehow, I can’t tell you. But it 
was driving away from your house one night, with 
my mind and my heart full of you, that the idea 
of the engine came. I thought of you every night 
while I was drawing it and every night while I 
was building it, and still you are with me always, 
just as you were then. It almost seems like a 
part of you, as the boy is now. It could not have 
been except for you.” 

Edith gently loosed herself from his embrace. 
She picked up the roses, bent her face down into 
them, and sighing, breathed of their rich fra- 


208 QUEST 

grance. Then she dropped them beside her and 
again entering David’s arms wept convulsively on 
his shoulder. 

David was inclined to blame her easy tears to 
the state of her health. Then he thought that, 
maybe, it was because, at last, she understood. 
He held her to him and kissed her hair and looked 
up at the dark braiding of the leafless maple 
branches. 


XIX 


A FTER that night it seemed to Edith that 
there was nothing more for her to learn, 
since, in David’s broken sentences, hardly 
clear to himself, were revealed to her with blind¬ 
ing clarity those matters whose darkness had 
perplexed her, and was revealed also the futility 
of groping farther along the way to which hope¬ 
fully she had committed herself. 

She felt the truth of her old presentiment, and 
she saw now clearly that she could not inspire him 
or guide him as she wished, because she was al¬ 
ready doing so in ways she could not have compre¬ 
hended. It was she who had been leading him, 
driving him to exhaustion in this frantic work of 
his. It was love of her from which had sprung 
the engine, her inspiration which had lighted its 
making; and, at last—what he did not know— 
it was her act which had made its being possible. 
She was overwhelmed at the thoroughness of her 
responsibility. Soul and body it was hers, she 
sighed, and, remembering how once she had in¬ 
quired with doubt whether she might give a soul 
to the engine, laughed bitterly at the ignorance 
of her inquiry. She could not give it a soul—she 
was its soul. 

The structure which she had endeavored to 


209 


210 


QUEST 

build for herself fell miserably to the earth, and 
she had not at present the strength to begin build¬ 
ing anew. The end was reached. Before, even 
in her torment, she had had always the hope that 
it was necessary only at last to touch him to be 
granted what she desired; but now hope and 
torment alike were gone. She had touched him, 
had taken possession of him. There was no 
farther to go. 

Her resignation became of a different sort 
from that she had accepted in the days of her 
confidence. She was aware of no thwarting, no 
tyranny; she was giving in not to David or to the 
inexorable scheme which filled his mind, but to 
herself, and the fate which she had herself pre¬ 
pared. However this could have come to be, she 
did not understand, but she could not deny that it 
was so. All was beyond her guidance now; it 
was herself that wa9 being guided. She made 
no effort. She felt only the uselessness of effort. 

In her detachment she attempted to gain a 
fuller perception of his character, his purposes, 
his unswerving, unfathomable, fantastic love for 
her, and to understand better, too, the condition 
which her own love had created. She was every 
day more conscious of the life nourished within 
her, and from that consciousness grew new 
thoughts, new anxieties. In her girlhood, as she 
had with whatever lightness accepted the bounty 


211 


QUEST 

which her father’s wealth could afford her, she 
had clung apprehensively to the notion that no 
joy can come except with suffering. Now, in the 
shadow of her travail, the reading of the old 
thought was reversed. There was no suffering, 
no sacrifice without its reward. Neither David’s 
labor, nor her own, could be futile. Some end 
would be served. She would wait for it, would 
not interfere with it. She did not even wish to 
see his expectancy spoiled by the coming of a 
daughter. 

The capricious middle-western autumn, with 
its moods, now recalling summer amid its gray¬ 
ing browns, now foretelling winter with its sharp 
winds, went by, leaving the bleak winter itself. 
Edith noted how, as her helplessness increased, 
David grew more alert in his attention to her, 
placing her chair, bringing her work, picking up 
from the floor a dropped spool of thread, with a 
certain awkward deference in all his acts which 
gently amused her. She saw how he became more 
solicitous and grave, and, at the same time, more 
enthusiastic, more intent in the perfecting of his 
schemes. She heard him in one breath inquire 
about her health or volunteer some service to 
her, and tell of the progress of the new factory 
buildings or of some modification which he had 
made in the engine. 

She could smile, because she knew him so well. 


212 


QUEST 

It was all one momentous work to him, in which 
she was as much an instrument as the engine. At 
that certainty, even, she could smile. Though 
his product might be the work of a mechanic, she 
knew there was nothing machinelike in him, but 
that his blood was warm and his love was genu¬ 
ine. It was not that he had pressed life from 
her; he had endowed the engine with a life which 
to him appeared as real. She could trust him at 
least. If her life was to be sacrificed to this thing, 
if also that of the child she was soon to bear, he 
was sacrificing his own life more willingly and 
more certainly than he was theirs. Yet she 
prayed that the sacrifice would not be required; 
and in her mind remained always the thought 
that, perhaps, some day he would be able to see 
what of life was real and what was not. She 
could endure till then. 


December came after an infinity of waiting. 

With the approach of the time of Edith’s con¬ 
finement, David, from the stiflement of his 
thoughts, fell into a sort of daze. He did feel, 
as his growing reverence showed, the solemnity 
of the event which lay before her, its dangers, its 
pain; he realized, doubtlessly with more clearness, 
the dependence on its happy issue of all that was 
cherished in his brain. When his brooding 


QUEST 213 

thoughts dwelt on these things, he became dis¬ 
traught with anxiety, suffered the torments of a 
dark imagination, cringed at the prickling of pre¬ 
monition; or else, in rarer moments, when his 
mind was raised above the thrall of his illusion, 
he was as completely overwhelmed with pity for 
Edith and crimination of himself. 

Then grimly he would collect himself, drive 
vigorously away his foreboding, insist on the folly 
of his pity and accusation which undid him; but 
his efforts brought him no calm. He had no pa¬ 
tience, found no burden equal that of waiting. 
When he glanced at Edith, he saw that she was 
serene, without nervousness or fear either in her 
words or in the expression of her silent lips. He 
could not understand how she could face so great 
a chance with such composure; he wondered what 
she could be thinking about, and dared not think 
himself. 

One evening in the second week of the month, 
while they were sitting at dinner—the three of 
them, for her mother had come from the farm to 
be with her—Edith suddenly became pale, started 
to raise herself with her arms, and then let her 
arms relax, and sank inertly in the chair. David 
got up and went to her side of the table. 

“What is it?” he asked childishly in dread, 
adding, hopeful of substituting a lesser ill, “An¬ 
other one of those attacks you’ve been having?” 


214 


QUEST 

“No, not this time,” Edith replied, smiling 
faintly at his concern, “I think I had better go.” 

He helped her from her chair and upstairs to 
the bedroom. There her mother displaced him. 
“Go for the doctor,” she said. “It is probably the 
beginning.” He gazed lingeringly at Edith, but 
she did not notice him, seeming deeply enwrapt 
in herself and alone in the room. While her 
mother made ready the bed, she paused by the 
window from which, in the daylight, one could 
look out over the city and the river. There was 
a gleam of resolution in her eyes as she gazed 
into the darkness which showed nothing, and her 
faint smile rested unmoved on her lips. 

Forgetting to use the telephone, David, in¬ 
stead, drove to the doctor’s house and would not 
leave until the doctor was ready to come with 
him. Irritated as he appeared to be at the pro¬ 
fessional coolness, he was inwardly glad, for it 
was an argument against his alarm, and would 
have been more glad had it continued after their 
return. But once in the room, the physician made 
no pretence to conceal his own uneasiness, and 
almost throughout the night, whose agony 
brought no result but the wearing down of Edith’s 
strength, he waited by the bedside. 

In the morning he brought a second doctor 
and, with his colleague and the mother, filled the 
room with his preparations. David was dis- 


QUEST 215 

turbed by the danger implied in the bringing of 
the consultant, by the strangeness of the activity 
around him, all of which in its disparity from 
what his life had encountered was incompre¬ 
hensible to him; and he wandered uselessly about, 
frowning at his uselessness. He looked down at 
his wife as she lay silently, her brow sprinkled 
with a dew of perspiration, her eyelids closed, 
her lips parted, her bosom heaving with her 
breath; and his fear impressed his frown in¬ 
delibly. 

Opening her eyes, Edith smiled assuringly at 
him as she did when occasionally she glanced at 
the others who seemed to be trying to help her. 
Then she caught his frown and assumed that he 
was frowning at her and wondered what she had 
done to prompt it. But her strength was too little 
to let itself assume a new burden. She closed her 
eyes, and again he became but one with the rest. 

On some pretext, David was sent from the 
room, and, when he returned, he found the door 
locked against him. He knocked lightly but re¬ 
ceived no recognition from the inside. The min¬ 
utes dragged. He heard the first groans, which 
told him that Edith’s pain had surpassed her lips’ 
restraint. He continued standing where he was, 
hardly knowing where he was, listening to the 
cries from within the room. Many times he 


216 QUEST 

thoughtlessly tried the door, but it remained 
barred to him. Time ceased altogether. 

The doctor came to the door, unlocked it, and 
held it narrowly opened. David clutched his arm. 

“Can I see her?” he begged. 

“Not now. She wouldn’t know you,” said the 
doctor with a shake of his head. His face was 
pale and serious, and he spoke nervously, pro¬ 
ceeding before David could interrupt, “It’s likely 
that it may be a choice between the child and the 
mother. In that case, you would want us, of 
course, to make our effort to save Mrs. Bullard.” 

David reached for the wall to support him. 

“Choice?” he gasped, his eyes staring at the 
physician. The world became wholly bewilder¬ 
ing, and yet a certain strange logic remained with 
him, involuntarily shaping his words. 

“Yes, yes, let me have Edith,” he said in 
anguish, and, as his voice dropped: “Yes—Edith 
—it might be a girl.” 

The door was shut. David went downstairs 
and, in the room below, dropped into the first 
chair which his blind footsteps encountered. His 
body was paralyzed and his mind tumultuous. 
Still he was staring at the doctor’s grave face and 
listening to his horrible sentence. Choice? How 
could that have been asked of him? Such a 
choice he had not conceived of, could not com¬ 
prehend. 


QUEST 217 

What if the dead child should be a boy—the 
precious boy, whom, by his word, he might have 
saved? Again he beheld the vision by which his 
life was directed, beheld it in its present incom¬ 
pleteness, saw it perishing from the lack of this 
which should make it real and eternal. What if 
the boy were dead? All was ready for him; all 
depended on him; nothing could longer be with¬ 
out him. 

What if both should be dead—Edith dead? 
He could not endure that either—above all he 
could not endure that. Everything could go first. 
Yet if the rest went, what was left for him? He 
pressed his hands tightly against his head. With 
an ominous flash, he remembered the nearness of 
the anniversary of that night on which he had 
followed his father’s tracks in the snow, and his 
old dread appeared to strengthen the new. Was 
this month to be doubly cursed? No longer he 
heard sounds from above except those which 
came from hurried, muffled footsteps on the bed¬ 
room floor. His head drooped with fear, and 
his arms hung limply over the sides of the chair. 

At length he heard other footsteps, now upon 
the stairway, but he dared not look around when 
one of the doctors came into the room. 

“It is over,” the doctor told him, the weariness 
of his voice overcoming his satisfaction. “Every¬ 
thing is all right. The child is a boy; and both 


218 QUEST 

will live. You may go up to see them whenever 
you wish.” 

“Thank you,” said David, but still he did not 
move. He was without thought or desire or im¬ 
pulse, but sat frozen in his daze as if the verdict 
of which he had despaired had not been the one 
he had heard, which now he found too prodigious 
for belief. An hour passed without his being 
aware of it. The room was growing dusk when 
Edith’s mother aroused him with a touch on his 
shoulder. 

“Why don’t you go to her, David?” she asked. 
“She’s had a hard time, and she’s distressed at 
your being away so long. Don’t wait any longer, 
please. She wants you.” 

David arose and went up to the bedroom. He 
opened the door softly and thrust his head inside, 
and Edith’s eyes, which had been making the 
door their resting place, perceived him at once. 

She smiled timidly and said, “Don’t be dis¬ 
pleased with me. Come—it is what we wished, a 
boy.” 

David came to her and, bending down, kissed 
her pale lips. When Edith showed him the baby 
sleeping close against her, he tried to smile his 
approval of the unfamiliar red object, but in his 
heart he was overcome with disappointment. The 
child had figured so largely in his scheme and had 
been delivered with so great travail that he ap- 


QUEST 219 

peared inadequate alike to the pain which he had 
caused and to the part he was to play hereafter. 
David turned his glance to Edith and beheld the 
joyful calm of her face. He felt his throat chok¬ 
ing and his eyes growing moist from emotions he 
could not name. 

“What shall we call him?” Edith asked. 

“You must say.” 

“Then he shall be David Joseph after you and 
my father.” 

“Better Joseph David,” he corrected humbly. 

“All right. Joseph David, then, after my 
father and you.” 

David sat down at the bedside. 

“Did you know,” he asked, “that day after to¬ 
morrow was the day my father died?” 

“No, dear, how should I? You have told me 
nothing.” She paused and looked significantly at 
him. “Didn’t you love your father, David?” 

He shook his head. “No. I am grateful to 
you that December has brought something which 
can blot him out.” 

For a while they looked silently at each other. 
Edith remembered the frown which had troubled 
her hours before and searched in his eyes now to 
find the reason for it. 

“Are you happy?” she asked. 

“Yes. We have everything now,” said David 
quietly. For a moment he was silent again, and 


220 


QUEST 

then he slowly added: “It’s strange, isn’t it, that 
he should come just at the time we were getting 
ready to move into the new buildings?” 

Edith glanced away. At the same moment 
from beneath the coverlet came the baby’s aching 
cry. She enfolded him in her weak arm. 

“How very much alive he is!” she murmured. 
“Yes, but how small.” Already David had 
seen him in an engine cab. 

“He will grow, David,” Edith protested. 
“Yes, to be sure, he will grow.” 


A few days later, David visited the new build¬ 
ings in which soon he was to house his factory. 
Of these there were four, laid irregularly along 
three sides of rectangle, with the principal struc¬ 
ture facing the street and the arms stretching away 
toward railroad and river. The main building of 
the group, containing the offices, the carpenter 
shop, and the warerooms, was an unrelieved, flat- 
roofed block of rough-jointed salmon brick. On 
one side, abutting it was the machine shop and, 
on the other, standing free, was the foundry, both 
built with gabled ends and clearstory, reminiscent 
of the Romanesque manner, but without the lux¬ 
ury of fancy by which in their architectural ances¬ 
tor similar rudeness had been disguised. 

Here was no brick which economy could have 


221 


QUEST 

eliminated or which the strictest necessity had not 
demanded, no toying with surfaces, no loving or 
playful handling of material, no trifling, no 
beauty, for the quest of beauty was still consid¬ 
ered a trifling occupation, and the value of trifling 
had not yet been discovered. The modern temple 
was without adornment, for ornament, being 
termed ginger-bread (and being indeed such when 
it did appear), was not admitted in the unyielding 
utility which governed its construction. Even the 
power-house, the sanctuary of the group, had no 
distinguishing mark except its tall stack, whose 
height was rivaled alone by the stilts of the sheet 
iron water tank in the center of the enclosure. 
It was the first time, perhaps, that men had made 
no effort to adorn their temples; and yet this lack 
came from no conscious niggardliness, but from 
an unawareness of the want. No need of orna¬ 
ment had a religion whose ceremonial kept its 
votaries too strenuously occupied to have taken 
note of it. 

David tied his horse at the edge of the street 
and took the narrow path which led up to the 
factory. The builders had finished their work 
and had gone, leaving their structures desolate in 
their newness, cold, empty save for the handful of 
men who were setting the machinery. From floor 
to floor and from one end of the building to the 


222 


QUEST 

other he walked, in his mind seeing everywhere 
the activity which was to be. 

In the office he stopped impatiently, deciding 
upon the placing of the desks, with Newton’s in 
the opposite corner from his own. Leaving the 
office, he walked through the dim, gaping ware- 
room, and stood out upon the balcony across the 
end of the machine shop. Silent and motionless, 
he reviewed the lines of lathes and forges, and 
then, climbing to the cramped cabin of the electric 
crane, he ran the marvelous device down and back 
along its track beneath the trusses of the shop 
roof. From the machine shop he went through 
the snow to the foundry, the oldest building of the 
group, besooted with its three months of service. 
There for a while he chatted with the men, who 
were waiting for the heat to rise; and, after the 
pouring had begun, he stood a short distance 
away, watching the gleaming metal flow from the 
trough into the long-handled ladles of the mold- 
ers. The sight thrilled him. He felt his own 
muscles bend with the workers and felt his blood 
run in the liquid steel. 

At length, changing the throbbing heat for the 
raw December outside, he walked the trodden 
path to the power-house. Noiselessly he entered 
and stood gazing at the great fly-wheel, half- 
hidden in the floor, resting with awful quiet in its 
tiled sanctum. The engineer was already at his 


QUEST 223 

post, reverently polishing the shining fittings. 
When he perceived David, he stood up and spoke 
to him with easy respect and then followed his 
silent gaze toward their mistress. 

“Ain’t she a beauty?” he asked with hushed 
pride. 

“She is, surely,” replied David, tingling with 
joy in finding his veneration shared. 

“When can we get her going full tilt?” asked 
the priest of the engine. 

“By Monday I should think. We ought to 
need power in the carpenter shop and heat and 
light in the office. We’ll get her started anyway.” 

As David was leaving the power-house, the 
passing of a train drew his attention. He smiled, 
and felt his heart expand with triumph. Within 
a month trains would be backing into his yard. 
He looked beyond the tracks to the river, clogged 
with ice. Before another year should freeze it, 
its boats would be carrying his wares from his 
dock to the farmland along its banks. All was 
accomplished. 

He walked back through the machine shop and 
the wareroom and the office, coming at last to the 
outer threshold of the factory. He paused there 
and looked around into the thickening black of 
the shadowed hall. Unmindful of the rough 
draught which swept by his legs, he stood for a 


224 QUEST 

long time leaning against the door, buried deep 
in his thought. 

With head bent down, he returned along the 
snowy path to the street. Again he turned and 
surveyed the whole substance of his dream. Then 
he untied the horse, transferred the blanket from 
the horse’s back to his own knees, and drove 
home. 


XX 


T HUS did David triumph and see his vision 
fulfilled in entirety—engine, factory, son— 
without reckoning the pain or the shortness 
of time with which all had been wrought. Less 
than two years had passed since the night on the 
flat, dark road when he had seen what his life 
should accomplish; yet, for him now, accomplish¬ 
ment, creation were over; the rest was merely 
nourishing what he had created. His great act 
was done; and henceforth to him, his life was a 
custodianship, during which he waited for his son r 
the infant Joseph, to give into his hands his work 
that the boy might build the future upon it. 

The impulse which had followed from his meet¬ 
ing with Edith was spent. He could reach no 
greater heights, because, having attained what he 
had set for himself and believing in the sufficiency 
of his attainment, he did not see beyond it. Upon 
this one pier were placed the foundations of his 
life. In this tangible monument his love and his 
hope were written. No other language did he 
know. 

David’s life thus became an interlude. But it 
was an interlude without relief, wherein the diver¬ 
sions of the proscenium could not keep the sounds 
of the shifting of old scenes from his ears, or the 
225 


226 QUEST 

prospect of new ones from awaking his anxieties. 
It was not his nature to be diverted or detached 
from the intense thraldom of existence; and so 
now his energies, called forth no longer with their 
earlier fury, could not relax, but remained tense 
as before and atrophied in their tenseness. He 
passed again into a state of restlessness and vague 
concern; and, like a plague, thought pressed upon 
him with its searching demands, sapping the great 
joy of his achievement. 


Six years went by. David permitted himself to 
know as little of leisure as formerly—he was 
afraid of leisure; and, as formerly, Edith rarely 
saw him before sundown. His life was in his 
factory; his pride, his stimulus, his forgetfulness 
were there; and his factory, breathing in his 
spirit, lived from the vigor which he exhausted 
upon it. He loved it and felt his love returned; 
from the limping, bearded watchman to the 
stripped fireman of the foundry cupola he knew 
his men and was known by them; he was as good 
a mechanic as any, could surpass at lathe and 
anvil, could make a hammer ring as truly, could 
turn out a bearing as precisely. All was his, was 
himself, and should be so forever. 

At seven every morning, Berg, who, from being 
his helper in the machine shop where the first 


QUEST 227 

engine was embodied, ruled now as shop foreman, 
brought his horse to him and drove him to the 
factory. Berg took care of the horse—he lived 
on a side street not far from David’s house; and 
in the evenings he would sometimes drive for 
David and his family, delighted in the pride 
which the master’s son showed on being allowed 
to sit beside him. When Berg did not come, 
David drove, he and Edith parcelling the chil¬ 
dren between them—the intervening years had 
brought two daughters, named Sarah and Martha 
for their grandmothers. In winter, they sent the 
horse to the country and did not drive. 

So life went on, and, beyond the one reality of 
the factory to which he clung with his entire soul, 
became filled with unrealities, with phantoms 
which passed like dream figures, almost intangi¬ 
ble, forever eluding his grasp. Among these 
phantoms were his children, even the son for 
whom all was built. Notwithstanding his wish to 
dispel it, the feeling of incongruity which he had 
had on his first look at the boy persisted. His 
son was not himself or like him, but a creature 
that baffled all approach, all comprehension, one 
that he could recognize not at all from the dreams 
he had had, whom he could only with a sense of 
strangeness see fitted into the scheme for which 
he had been born. Except for its memory of 
pain, his own childhood was long past; and the 


228 QUEST 

selfishness, the gay indifference, the stubborn 
purposes of childhood were hardly appreciable to 
him for whom one purpose alone could exist. 

Moodily, he watched the boy at play with his 
sisters; he noted how, in spite of the enthusiasm 
which the three showed at his coming, they ad¬ 
mitted him to no part in their lives, how, though 
they listened with bulging pupils to his fictions 
about Indians and Frenchmen and wild animals, 
they left him as soon as the stories were done; 
and at times he grew resentful, though his pain 
showed only in the deepening of his mood. They 
had no confidence in him, no love, he mused sadly; 
and, after they had been taken by their mother 
upstairs to bed, he continued to wonder, listening 
to the distant babbling of their voices. He shook 
his head and frowned. 

One evening, a frightened wail led him to one 
of the children’s bedrooms, where he found his 
oldest daughter crying and talking in her sleep. 
Her disjointed, sobbing words told him it was his 
story which caused the torment; and he awak¬ 
ened her and, overrruling her protest for her 
mother, soothed her himself and sat beside her, 
holding her small hand in his until she was asleep. 
Then, distraught, he went back downstairs. 
“Edith, Edith, what is it about me?” 

Edith was startled at his outcry, but then her 
■expression of surprise vanished in an enigmatic 


QUEST 229 

smile. “It is nothing,” she said quietly. “At 
their age all is new and strange and real; they 
cannot tell fancy from reality.” But her words 
did not help him, and her smile troubled him the 
more. He resumed his chair by the table and 
pretended to be occupied with some figuring which 
he began to do with pencil and paper. 

He glanced covertly at Edith. Edith herself 
had never been real to him, and now she seemed 
most completely beyond his touch. As in the days 
of his courtship, she was a being apart from and 
above him, to be loved with a mystic adoration, 
but never met with on a common ground. He 
could use her as he needed, endanger her life, 
might even take it, yet his worship remained un¬ 
changed and herself unrecognized. His worship, 
like all worship, was not untouched with fear— 
if she had brought all to him, might she not take 
all away? His thought grew dark, and he 
watched her as she sat at the other side of the 
lamp with hands in the rhythmical movements of 
sewing. She had once said that ruin was possible. 
Why had she said that? 

A flood of strange thoughts, tangled memories, 
ancient dreads, superstitions of his own devising 
swept upon him. He recalled for the first time in 
several years the unknown old man who had rid¬ 
den with him in the snowstorm and the ferryman 
whose croaking had preceded the coming of 


2 3 o QUEST 

Edith. By now the two ancients had become com¬ 
bined indistinguishably in one figure, a demoniac 
figure with awful significance. Twice it had ap¬ 
peared with obscure warnings; the third time 
would mean ruin. Yet it had not come a third 
time—and would not come. He frowned at 
Edith sewing placidly near him. Why had she 
said that about ruin? Could it be that she wished 
it? The image of his father again arose, looking 
unpleasantly like him. He shook himself. These 
ghosts must be allayed. Other evenings brought 
the same thoughts until at length his resolve was 
made. 

“Edith, I’m thinking I’ll make a visit home,” 
he said with a hard huskiness. His eyes were 
again upon his figuring. 

“Why don’t you?” she replied, “the folks 
haven’t seen either of us since Easter time— 
nearly two months now.” 

David laughed. “No, it’s not there I mean, 
though it’s true that has been more a home to me 
than the other.” 

“I didn’t know there was any other.” 

“There was once. A little while ago, I got a 
new stone for my mother’s grave, and I thought 
I’d go and see if they had put it up right.” 

“Do you want me to go with you?” asked 
Edith with an entreaty in her voice. 

“No, it would be useless for you to go.” His 


QUEST 231 

pencil moved idly. “If you like, though,” he 
added at length, “you can take the children to 
Bess’s. My stop’s at Bethany, on the same line, 
about a quarter of an hour from Sullivan. Henry 
could meet you there and help you from the junc¬ 
tion, and I’d come on to Allenville a day or so 
later.” 

Edith complied, accepting her exclusion, and a 
week later the long journey across the state, with 
a weary delay at Decatur, was made. At Bethany 
as he had proposed, he kissed her and the chil¬ 
dren good-bye, leaving them to be carried on¬ 
ward by the train, while he set out alone into his 
unknown land. 


David Bullard was, indeed, again in his own 
land, again on the soil from which he had sprung, 
out of which, like its now maturing grain, were 
raised the thousand memories of which he reaped 
the harvest. To this town of Bethany, after his 
father’s death, he had ridden to find the minister. 
Less than ten miles westward was the farm where 
he had spent his toilsome youth. Farther down 
the same road, as it led toward Moweaqua, his 
father had been lost and frozen; along it, too, he 
had driven away with his mother and, four years 
later, had brought back her body. It was from 
this soil that his aspirations and his dreads had 


232 Q U E S T 

grown. His roots were here, and, though the 
tendrils of his life had stretched away, his sub¬ 
stance remained of this ground. Relentlessly it 
gripped his feet as they touched upon it. 

He thought of his return as he had pictured it 
when, on the last of those early days, he had de¬ 
parted from the land alone. He was back now, 
with all that he had dreamed of having and more; 
yet his chief feeling was of the difference of all 
from what he had dreamed it would be. He 
shook his head. So had it always been. Still he 
continued to ponder. One change that he recog¬ 
nized from his former self was that his vigor and 
his fortitude were less. Something had been sap¬ 
ping him, he could not tell what. He felt an 
overwhelming need for hurry, for action which 
would save him. It was well that, he had not 
delayed longer, he thought. 

Yet he did not move. As he sat through the 
evening apart from the others on the dark hotel 
porch, he longed for Edith, and then, reflecting, 
was glad he had not let her come. She could not 
help. It was better to be alone. He bent his 
head, brooding over his thoughts. Weariness 
consumed him, and he went early to bed. 

The morning came with promise of warmth 
and clearness; and, before the pink haze had 
lifted from the fields, David, with borrowed 
horse and buggy, had set off upon his errand. As 


QUEST 233 

he drove, the promise of the day was fulfilled. 
The sky deepened in unclouded blue, and the 
fresh sun sparkled in untarnished trees and across 
bright cornfields, whose leaves could yet bow be¬ 
neath the axle of the cultivator. In one field that 
he passed, a man was already at work with a( 
team, and the man’s whistle from his swaying, 
high-perched, iron seat brought out louder the 
mocking notes of jay and catbird. A rabbit with 
fur sleek with dew darted from the high grass at 
one side of the road to dive, after startled delib¬ 
eration, into the grass at the other. Each field 
surpassed the last in fragrance; each succeeding 
barnyard was more awake with the day’s life. But 
with the morning David was grievously out of 
tune. He had come to exorcise ghosts, and his 
business was heavy upon him. 

The road brought him first to the graveyard. 
He got out of the buggy, tied the horse to a 
gate-post, and walked into the flat, high-grown 
meadow, which still wanted the year’s first scythe. 
Crushing the tall, wet grass under his feet, he 
made a path between the irregularly placed lots, 
with stones half-effaced, with here and there a 
broken vase or rusted can, a twisted evergreen or 
a scraggly rosebush with crimson flowers. 

Had his memory failed him in this tracing of his 
former path, he would still have needed no guide, 
since the obelisk, prominently labeled, which he 


234 QUEST 

had placed, overtopped the other monuments; 
and he approached it with much deviation so that 
he could view it from all sides and affirm his 
initial satisfaction. Hat in hand, he walked up 
to it and rubbed his thumb over its surface and 
in the deep grooves of the carved name of 
Bullard; then, painfully frowning, he tamped 
down a piece of sod which had been left ripped 
from his mother’s grave, and went to inspect the 
new footstones. On that of his father, relentless 
dislike had permitted the inscribing merely of the 
name and the dates of birth and death. With his 
mother, distrust of sentiment restrained his 
ardent imagination, but, since his veneration did 
demand some distinguishing tribute, he went to 
as great length as he could safely devise. The 
inscription read, 

SARAH CAMPBELL 
WIFE OF THOMAS BULLARD 

BORN-SEPT. 3 , 1830 

EDGECOMBE CO. N. CAROLINA 

DIED-FEB. 17 , 1882 

SHELBY CO. ILLINOIS 
PLACED BY HER SON 

That she had had other sons he ignored. His 
vanished brothers he disowned. His mother be¬ 
longed to him only. He repeated the words of 


QUEST 235 

the inscription, “Edgecombe County, North Caro¬ 
lina, Shelby County, Illinois.” 

What a journey was written there, what travail 
had there been in its making, what little reward 
at its end! David grew meditative beyond his 
nature, and, discovering his eyes to be filled with 
tears, he strolled away. On the other side of the 
obelisk lay his grandfather and grandmother. He 
noticed how the soft native limestone had worn 
away, leaving their names hardly legible. He 
would have them replaced also. His stones were 
granite and would last forever. 

Bareheaded, he walked out of the cemetery, 
untied the horse, which had been straining to get 
at the fresh grass, climbed into the buggy, and 
trotted on down the road. After a short distance 
he came to his home, whose visible neglect pro¬ 
claimed a still more careless tenantry than it % had 
suffered under his father. This was the second 
point in his pilgrimage, and he drove into the lane 
and stopped his horse in the barnyard. At the 
sound of strange hoofs, a meanly-dressed woman 
with two small children hanging at her skirt came 
to the door. 

He explained his errand to the woman and was 
admitted to the kitchen. There her husband, 
newly in from the fields, raised his dripping face 
from the wash basin to greet him and to answer 
his questions. From neither one could David 


236 QUEST 

awaken response to his need for familiar recogni¬ 
tion. His stones had not been observed; his name 
conjured up no recollection; the families after 
whom he asked, even the Martins, mighty in the 
neighborhood in his day, were vanished. He sat 
through the rough dinner which his hosts urged 
upon him, looking about the strange room which 
had been most intimate with his life and feeling 
no desire but to be away from it forever. 

When the farmer returned to his cultivator, 
David walked with him and climbed to the knoll 
beloved of his boyhood. His grandfather’s 
stump was still there, hidden in ragweed, and he 
sat down upon it. But the old spell did not 
come: no clouds awakened his fancy; no thoughts 
came which were not already deep in his mind. 
He turned back into the bramble, made his way 
along the fence lines until he came to the barn¬ 
yard, and replaced the bit in the horse’s mouth. 
There was yet another station in his way. 

He drove on toward the hollow where were 
the woods in which his father had perished. He 
passed by it and then, perplexed by what seemed 
a shuffling of landmarks, drove slowly in the di¬ 
rection from which he had come and stopped at 
the place where he knew he had stopped on the 
night when the tracks he had been following 
turned there aside into the wood. But the trees 
had been felled, An inescapable horror seized 


QUEST 237 

upon him. The high sun beat down on the 
smooth valley where the wood had been, but the 
wood of his imagination stood more darkly than 
before. 


The next afternoon in Allenville, he was walk¬ 
ing with Edith, their two daughters between 
them, their slow feet following without design the 
path of their first walk together. They came to 
the stile, helped the children across into the en¬ 
closure, and rested on the wooden steps. 

“Your journey has made you sad,” Edith re¬ 
marked. 

“I did not expect it to do otherwise.” 

There was a pause. Edith looked toward the 
children, calling to Sarah to take better care of 
her sister. “The lambs,” murmured David. He 
glanced at Edith. “Do you suppose they are 
happy?” 

“It is hard to say—they give so little thought 
to it.” 

“It would be great to be that way,” he said 
dully. 

Edith sat with her head a little raised, a soft 
pensiveness in her deep eyes. “We are all like 
that, too much that,” she said. “We are a 
strange people, like children—too much alive to 
sense life. We have no background—nothing to 


238 QUEST 

judge ourselves by. Yet, if we had, if we could 
see, I don’t think we should do as we do.” 

For a while they were silent. 

‘‘Edith,” David began in a low voice, “nobody 
remembers my father or my grandfather. Not 
even the people in our house have heard of them. 
Our name’s gone from the land. My mother 
once said it would.” 

He stopped a moment, not looking up. Then 
he went on. “All my grandfather’s work has 
perished, Edith. He drove his plow around half 
the prairie in the north of Shelby County, but no 
Bullard owns it now. He had four sons. One 
was killed in the war; the others went west; ex¬ 
cept my father, who was the oldest. He had five 
sons, but I don’t know where any of them is 
except myself. There’s nothing left but the 
stones I bought, and they’re standing there mean¬ 
ingless, with no one to read them.” He shook 
his head as he had shaken it after his lonely walk 
through the fields and at the end of his westward 
drive the day before. “My father wasn’t worth 
much, but even with that my grandfather’s work 
should not all have been lost. There should have 
been something permanent, something that was 
continuous, that could go on from father to son. 
What each generation builds dies with it. There’s 
not a thing that remains.” 

Edith bent closer to him, smiling fondly. “Not 


QUEST 239 

all was lost, David. Your grandfather did leave 
something permanent.” 

David shrugged his shoulders. “It can’t be 
seen.” 

“It isn’t something you have to hold in your 
hands,” she said quietly. 

David gave no heed to what she said, but, look¬ 
ing up earnestly into her face, let his absorbed 
thought carry him, almost vehemently, onward. 
“All my life, I’ve been driven by the fear of being 
like my father, of getting nothing, of losing even 
what I had, and leaving nothing behind me. I 
hated him, Edith, I can’t tell you how, as a boy, 
I cried out against him. I wanted to be like my 
grandfather, to build something which could grow 
from my beginning and live on after me. First 
I planned to restore the farm, but that was taken 
away before I could do anything. After that I 
drifted, drifted dangerously until you came. 
Then all was certain. I could design the engine 
and build the factory, and with that I conquered 
my father. In all that, Edith, we have a monu¬ 
ment to ourselves, and Joseph can build on from 
where we shall have to leave off.” 

Edith was silent. 

“Don’t you believe?” he implored her to be¬ 
lieve, as if her faith were a talisman against his 
own unconviction, “don’t you believe I have ac- 


240 QUEST 

complished this? Don’t you believe in it, Edith, 
more than you used to?” 

“I am sure that you will leave behind even 
more than your grandfather, and I am sure that 
Joseph will not neglect what comes to him,” she 
replied, but she knew that her words were stilted 
and that he would not hear in them what she had 
meant. 

There was a silence. She dropped her eyes 
and raised her handkerchief to her mouth. “Oh, 
David, David,” she sighed appealingly. 

“What is it?” 

She hesitated, and fell into his way of speak¬ 
ing, when words had caught him. “Nothing, I 
love you,” she whispered, with the same appeal. 

“I, too, love you.” He frowned and fingered 
the cloth of her skirt. 

While they had been talking, the sun had set¬ 
tled low over the yellow wheat in front of them. 
Edith looked back into the woods. “Call them, 
dear,” she asked softly, “they cannot have strayed 
far, though these woods have a strange magic 
for children.” 

“No, I’ll go after them,” David mumbled, and 
climbed over the stile and set off toward the trees. 

Within the edge of the dusky woodland he 
found his daughters. When they saw him ap¬ 
proaching, one whispered to the other, and the 
other whispered something in return, and then 


QUEST 241 

both ran before him from tree to tree, screaming, 
and darted across the border of open land to the 
arms of their mother. David was terrified. 

“Edith, why are the children afraid of me?” 
he demanded as he came near to her. 

“No, we weren’t afraid,” Martha explained, 
“we were only pretending he was the ogre.” 

“And he did look like an ogre too, with his face 
all frowned up that way,” added her sister. 

Edith laughed and, blocking his way when he 
came up the stile, smoothed his forehead with 
her hand. Then they kissed each other’s lips and 
walked down the steps together; Sarah clasped 
her mother’s hand, and David picked up Martha, 
who fell asleep in his arms while they walked 
toward the house. 

“Do you remember,” Edith asked, “that it was 
in these woods that you searched for Betty when 
she was a child as small as ours?” 

“Yes, it was the first day.” 

“How much there is, David, that we have 
brought to each other since then.” 

“Yes,” he mused, “all is sure now.” 

On the porch that evening, he talked with 
Henry Crosby about his factory, spoke deeply, 
with a shade of humility in his voice, of the suc¬ 
cess of the engine and the necessity of increasing 
the output. He told of a new machine shop, for 
which foundations were already laid, of an addi- 


242 QUEST 

tion to the foundry, of a heavy investment in iron 
when the market was low. Crosby pressed him 
for the means by which all was done. David was 
indifferent, vague. Credit had been advanced on 
bonds issued at the advice of Donne—against 
Ruppert’s wish. Crosby expressed himself dubi¬ 
ously about the wisdom of the transaction. David 
frowned but passed on. He hated the discord 
but believed they knew what they were doing; he 
was busy enough turning out engines. 

“I’ve heard through someone,” remarked 
Crosby, “that some live town or other was want¬ 
ing you to move to them. Anything to that?” 

David shook his head. “No, nothing. There 
was a delegation from Quincy came to me with a 
proposition—offered to furnish land and new 
buildings and said they’d subscribe sixty thousand 
new stock besides. But I couldn’t take it. You 
know how, when I was trying to get started, I 
went down there without getting anything. My 
town gave me all when I had nothing. It 
wouldn’t be fair to go away now that I’ve had a 
little success.” 

“Your town wouldn’t likely be so careful about 
not going back on you,” said Crosby with a cyni¬ 
cism sprung from a hundred speculations in grain. 

“I don’t think that,” David replied confidently. 
“When the buildings are finished, I’ll be giving 
support to about eight hundred families, and it’ll 


QUEST 243 

be only a question of time till we have more. 
Think of the new homes, the new stores, the new 
business generally that that means. I don’t think 
they’d forget that right away—though—” he 
added hastily, “I don’t believe they’ll ever have 
reason to think of it.” 

After the children had been put to bed, the two 
wives came to the porch and took their chairs 
without interrupting the conversation from the 
depths of which their husbands ignored them. 
Edith sat tranquilly in the shadow with her eyes 
upon David. She observed how his voice had 
changed from the afternoon and his spirit with it. 
It was the factory which had comforted him and 
revived him, she knew, the factory which had 
conquered her because it gave him all that it had 
been her desire to give. She admitted her defeat 
and was quiet and wistfully meditative. 

Bess folded her arms over her plump bosom. 
“It’s getting cool, I think we’d better go inside,” 
she announced decisively. 

Henry made a move to get up from his chair. 
“Yes, I guess so,” he said from habit of agree¬ 
ment, “how about a little game of euchre?” 


XXI 


D AVID, returning to his desk, glorified in 
the progress of the new work of which he 
had spoken to his friend. From the of¬ 
fice window he could see wagons heaped with 
earth drive away from the factory enclosure and 
loads of brick pull ponderously in. He could see 
the men working in the pit near the machine shop, 
could hear their voices, calling to each other or 
urging horses up the steep planked incline. He 
looked each morning to gauge the extent of the 
work and at length beheld what he had impa¬ 
tiently waited for—the top of the wall raising 
itself above the earth level. His joy was greater 
than it had been at the erection of the first build¬ 
ings, for those first were a gamble against forces 
which he could not measure. These spoke un- 
questioningly of strength, and he was filled with 
confidence as he looked at them. 

He toured the factory, climbing to the sweat¬ 
ing cupola, coming over in the end to the power¬ 
house, where, with the engineer, he stood watching 
the glistening, silently whirling rim of the mighty 
wheel. He saw the great pile of raw iron in the 
lot decrease as if in the belch of flame above the 
foundry roof. He listened to the shrieking of 
metal in the machine shop and to the martial 
drumming of air-hammers. Returning to the of- 
244 


QUEST 245 

flee he stopped at Newton’s desk to inquire after 
the bond sale. This was outside the routine of 
his tour, but something Crosby had said disquieted 
him. Newton was reassuring. The bonds were 
reported being rapidly taken up; a remittance 
from Blain and Company of St. Louis, the brok¬ 
ers, was expected soon. David went on to his own 
desk and, before setting to work, looked once 
more at the rising wall where the new shop was 
building. He arranged his papers in front of him. 
All was well. 

Home he carried his pride and contentment 
and spoke of it in characteristic manner to Edith, 
referring to his son, on whom his thoughts were 
always. “How fortunate we are to have him 
grow up with the rest, to have him beginning to 
be strong and tall just as things are being made 
ready for him.” For a moment he paused and 
then went on with voice gravely hushed, “I often 
think of how your father must feel with that 
farm, which he received from his father, now 
with no one to carry it on after him.” 

“Yes, he is sorry he never had a son.” 

He took her hand, repeating, “How very for¬ 
tunate we are, Edith. Nothing is lacking.” 

They were sitting in the darkness of their gar¬ 
den. Among the trees below them were scat¬ 
tered the lights of houses; far away were the 
lines of red and yellow bridge lamps and the 


246 QUEST 

drifting constellation of an excursion steamboat, 
doubled in reflection. From the boat floated the 
sound of a calliope played by fingers not over¬ 
skilled, and with this distant, unalterably melan¬ 
choly music was joined the strumming of locusts, 
and the faint motion of leaves in the slow breath 
of the summer evening. Edith felt the clasp of 
his hand, uncomfortably tight; and yet, in spite 
of his strength, felt communicated to her a trem¬ 
bling of his fingers. She lifted his hand to her lap 
and laid hers gently upon it. 


A few days later as he sat at his desk, a tele¬ 
gram from St. Louis was brought to him. Un¬ 
folding it casually, he read the words: Failure of 
Blain and Company announced this morning. He 
read it several times and then spread it flat on 
the desk top and gazed at it. Strangely, he felt 
no surprise; it was as if the event were something 
which he had long expected. 

He called Newton and pointed to the message. 
“Read this.” Newton read. 

“Have we had any remittance on our bonds?” 
asked David. 

“No. It would have been due to-morrow.” 

“Have they all been taken up?” 

“I don’t know.” 


QUEST 247 

“Wire for particulars and come back when you 
find out.” 

David had not moved when Newton returned. 
He glanced up at the treasurer, saw his face pale 
with fear, and became filled with contempt. What 
in any event, could be Newton’s loss compared 
with his own. 

“Well?” he questioned. 

“They’re all sold, a week ago.” 

Without a word, David arose, put on his hat, 
and walked through the shop to the shed beyond, 
where his horse was tied. A workman helped 
him to harness. David hoarsely thanked him, 
climbed into the buggy and drove to Donne’s of¬ 
fice. 

Donne considered the telegrams which were 
presented to him, pulled at his upper lip in 
thought, and proposed to find Ruppert, the 
banker. It was the middle of the afternoon be¬ 
fore Ruppert could be found. David’s excitement 
had grown in the tense hours of waiting, and he 
rushed without reserve into the matter of his visit, 
told of the failure and its consequences, and 
waited for Ruppert’s reply. Ruppert was un¬ 
moved. From his heavy complacency he let fall 
a scornful look at Donne, but did not reply. 

“What are we to do?” David repeated. 

Ruppert /shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t 


248 QUEST 

know. For one thing, you may be assured that 
our bank won’t press you.” 

“Of course,” said David, “but what about the 
other banks? They’ll be on our necks by morn¬ 
ing. We’ve got to do something to meet them.” 

“We depend on you. You’re the one who 
can save the situation,” Donne inserted. 

Ruppert leaned back in his chair, rubbing his 
hands as if to clean them of the whole matter. 
“Was it not you,” he said pointedly to Donne, 
“who made this deal for them? I think it should 
be up to you to get them through it.” 

“What have we got to meet this with?” David 
demanded, writhing with impatience as he faced 
first one and then the other of his financiers. 

“Nothing but the buildings and the material 
on hand, I suppose,” Donne answered, “unless,” 
with a hopeless movement of his lean shoulders, 
“Mr. Ruppert allows the credit he has at his dis¬ 
posal. It is up to him. We cannot get through 
otherwise.” 

To David they were like surgeons quarreling 
in an operation. Angrily he smote the table with 
his hand. “You’ll not let this thing fall. You’re 
going to see it through.” He seized the telephone 
and called Newton, eyeing the while the pair at 
the table with him as if to prevent their escape. 
“What’s the latest?” he asked. 


QUEST 249 

“The St. Louis banks have called our loans,” 
the reply came. 

“Don’t answer,” he shouted into the ’phone, 
“Be at the First State Bank at half-past eight. 
See that all the directors are called.” 

“It will be impossible for me,” said Ruppert. 

“You’ll come,” David retorted sharply and, 
taking his hat, strode out of the room. 

Mechanically he started toward the factory and 
walked several blocks before he remembered that 
his horse was standing in front of the bank. He 
turned about, retraced his way, and drove to 
Berg’s stable. Mechanically again, with the in¬ 
grained movements of boyhood, he unharnessed 
the horse, fed him, and bedded his stall—tasks 
usually left to Berg. From there, in the late twi¬ 
light, he walked the short distance to his home. 

By his lined face, which molded itself to con¬ 
form to the stress within him, as if it were not 
a covering but the very shape of the emotion it¬ 
self, Edith could perceive how deeply he was 
troubled, although his words, always to her less 
informative, gave her no hint from which she 
could discover the cause of his humor. While at 
supper she did not question him. Neither of 
them was able to eat. David’s eyes rested on 
nothing; Edith’s only on him; and the children’s 
talking sounded clangorously in their ears. 


250 QUEST 

As soon as the children were away, Edith came 
to him, calmly demanding, “Now, David, tell me 
what’s the matter.” 

“Too much to say.” 

“David, tell me,” she begged. 

“Blain and Company—you know, the brokers 
who held our bonds—well, they’ve failed; and 
our money’s lost with them.” 

“How does that touch you?” 

“Don’t you see, we’re responsible for what of 
ours they lost and for the loans we made on the 
strength of it besides. The banks that gave us 
credit will be on us all at once, and we’ll have 
nothing to give them.” He spoke rapidly, his 
voice husky with his agitation. 

“But the factory can’t fail because of that, 
David.” The situation had no other appearance 
to her but of absurdity. Such lack of substance as 
this, such frailty, exceeded what her worst fears 
had pictured. 

David smiled with indulgence at her incred¬ 
ulity. “I don’t know. I may be helpless.” Then 
he frowned and shook his head, forcing the confi¬ 
dence which came no longer of itself. “But it 
won’t fail. You’re right, it can’t fail because of 
that. I made it, and I can save it. I’ve called a 
directors’ meeting for to-night.” 

A little later he hurried away from the house. 


QUEST 251 

Edith, left behind, followed him in her thoughts, 
pictured him at the meeting, imagined what he 
would say, how gloriously he would fight, how he 
would triumph. Then the false ring of what he 
had said to her echoed in her mind, bringing the 
same doubt as had the trembling of his hand a 
few nights before—he had less faith even than 
she, though he was striving to hide his lack from 
himself; he was alone, and afraid to admit his 
loneliness. 

Again she felt drawn to him by his need of her, 
and her spirit was strengthened and her heart 
stirred from the quiet in which it had rested. Her 
thoughts, her love, her life were that moment 
taken all by him. She could not move save for 
him, could answer no summons but his. From 
upstairs came the voices of the children, remind¬ 
ing her of customary tasks, but she asked the 
maid to see that they were put to bed and did not 
herself move. They were irrelevant to her, with¬ 
out claim upon her. Suddenly came the thought 
of the loss which her father would suffer if the 
factory should fail, but she pushed that also from 
her mind. He could endure. David, perhaps, 
could not. David alone she cared for. She waited 
in the quiet house for his return. 

Somewhat after half-past eleven came the 
sound of his running footsteps on the porch and 


252 QUEST 

of the nervous click of his key finding its way 
into the lock. She was in the hall to meet him, 
but he brushed her by, calling as he went upstairs, 
‘‘There’s a midnight train for Quincy, I’ve got to 
make it.” 

She followed him. David was already packing 
his bag. He snatched from her hands the articles 
which she brought to him. His frown was deep; 
his eyes shone with a wild resolution; his lips 
were unsteady. 

“They made us an offer not long ago, you re¬ 
member. We’ll see if they stand by it now.” 

“What came of the meeting?” she asked. 

“It ended. But it’s not the end yet.” 

The bag was packed. Edith followed him 
downstairs, and he kissed her hurriedly as he 
went through the door. 

From the darkness she heard the voice of Berg 
waiting with the horse, and David’s indistinct 
command. She heard also the crack of the whip 
and the clatter of iron as the horse jumped into a 
gallop; and she listened until the awakened street 
resounded no more to the hoof-beats. For a 
while longer, she stood out in the cool night and 
then stepped into the house, locked the door, and 
climbed upstairs. She went about tidying the 
bedroom after the hurry of packing, spending 
useless minutes smoothing the dresser-cover and 
arranging the things upon it. At length she 


QUEST 253 

moved slowly away and, sitting on a chair near 
the bed, began to undress. A feeling of empti¬ 
ness was her only sensation. 


On his return, the second morning following, 
David went directly to the factory. Production 
was stopped; men were laid off, the office was in 
panic, the wires were choked with demands upon 
it. Another directors’ meeting was to be held 
in the afternoon. David had an appointment 
with Ruppert an hour earlier. 

When David came in, the banker half-turned 
in his chair. David seated himself without wait¬ 
ing for an invitation. 

“Your trip to Quincy,” Ruppert inquired, with 
satisfaction dispelling David’s belief in the se¬ 
crecy of his exploit, “was it a success?” 

“No, I could get nothing,” David admitted. 

“I am reminded of a similar trip you once 
made.” 

David contained himself. “You helped me 
then,” he said, taking up the banker’s insinuation, 
“and you can save me now. Our business was 
never better. Our engine’s a success—you know 
that. The demand for it increases all the time. 
There’s no risk on that, nothing like the risk you 
took when you first went into it; it’s a sure thing. 
But we’ve got to have credit, plenty of it, to carry 


254 QUEST 

us through this. You can get it for us; you have 
to get it.” 

Ruppert shook his head, smiling inwardly at 
David’s idea of the risk he had taken. “I’ve al¬ 
ready said what we will do.” 

“What’s that?” 

“We’ll not press our claims. We can do no 
more than that.” 

“That is nothing.” 

“We can do no more,” Ruppert said gently. 
“Our bank is involved deeply enough already. 
We cannot endanger our depositors.” 

“Think of the stockholders you have endan¬ 
gered. You’re one yourself—don’t forget that.” 

Ruppert became less bland. “What’s the mat¬ 
ter with Donne?” he asked. 

“Donne can do nothing. You know that.” 
“Yes, but you should have realized it sooner.” 
“Do you know what this means?” demanded 
David. 

“Yes.” 

“Bankruptcy.” 

“Yes.” 

“It is ridiculous.” 

“It is safest.” 

David clenched his fists. 

“The creditors will force us into it if we don’t 
take it ourselves,” Ruppert added. 

“You can induce them to hold off.” He stood 


QUEST 255 

up, bending threateningly forward. “With a 
word you are ruining me and destroying the work 
of my life. You are taking more than the money; 
you’re taking life itself, all that I hoped to build 
and leave after me. But I tell you, where I can 
make you, you’ll lose with me. For every penny 
I lose, you’ll lose one also.” He spoke in fury 
and his anger carried him beyond himself. He 
was reeling; what he spoke or did was in the in¬ 
difference of drunkeness flinging out against con¬ 
finement. 

The banker was unmoved. “I shall recom¬ 
mend bankruptcy. And,” he added calmly, “even 
with that you may not have that opportunity you 
so much desire.” The meeting which followed, 
Ruppert carried to his satisfaction. 

It was after dark when David reached home. 
The children had been put to bed. Over the late 
supper which Edith had kept ready for him, he 
confessed to her of his futile journey; he re¬ 
peated his conversation with Ruppert; he per¬ 
mitted his dejection to show in his cruelly fur¬ 
rowed brow and cheeks. 

“It looks like the end of me, Edith,” he con¬ 
cluded. 

“Oh, it can’t be the end,” said Edith. She 
glanced at him and, though she received no en¬ 
couragement, let herself be carried onward, speak¬ 
ing the thoughts which had grown from the soli- 


256 QUEST 

tude in which his fury had left her: “The factory, 
David, was like our bodies. They die suddenly 
and for reasons not always of our making. Be¬ 
cause of that, though, our souls do not die but 
may go free and unsoiled by the dead. You were 
the factory’s soul, David. Even if it should have 
to go, even if they will not let it live, you can 
leave it untouched by its ruin.” 

“It cannot be the end,” David mused. 

Edith caught the desperation in his musing. 
Her heart beat in fear as she leaned toward him, 
pleading. 

“For you it cannot; it must not. Leave it, 
David, please, before it drags you down with it. 
What firm in the country would not take your pa¬ 
tents and you with them, if you chose. See what 
freedom it gives you—to build a new engine, 
maybe, as much an advance on the old as that was 
over those which preceded it. Gasoline’s being 
used more and more now. You might be the one 
to develop that.” 

David shook his head. “I know nothing about 
gasoline engines. I put all I had into the old one, 
Edith; I can do no more except through it.” 

For a moment they were silent. 

“It cannot be the end,” David repeated grimly, 
“it cannot. It’s not possible that this thing should 
have happened. Think, Edith, only last week 
everyone’s faith was as firm as mine. Now, I 


QUEST 257 

must stand alone again.” He looked toward her 
from beneath his compressed brows. “But I have 
not forgotten how to stand alone.” 

Edith’s arms rested on her knees, her opened 
hands reaching out to him as if to close the abyss 
which widened between them. 

“Why stand alone, dear?” she asked. 

“Because I must. Not even you think I can 
save it.” 

“It is not that,” Edith pleaded. “You know 
it is not that. You are keeping us from being 
what we should be to each other. You have al¬ 
ways kept us so.” 

She paused, and then resumed with as much 
composure and reasonableness as she could com¬ 
mand : “I do not want the engine to be lost, David, 
if it can be saved, if it ought to be saved. Yet I 
am sure this hasn’t come to us without reason. 
I trembled for fear of it years ago, when you 
were ill beside me, for fear that you were giving 
yourself to a master who would raise you high 
only to be able to destroy you the more terribly. 
You mustn’t give in to it. I cannot endure to see 
you giving up because some people a hundred 
miles from here have defaulted. It’s unworthy 
of you, David—what they do has nothing to do 
with you. It isn’t the engine that matters, but 
you and only you. It may be that the engine can¬ 
not be saved; it may be that this is so in order 


258 QUEST 

that ourselves may be saved. Oh, there is more 
in life than engines!” She glanced up and caught 
his eye. “I beg you not to look at me that way, 
David.” 

“Then I ask you not to talk that way. How 
can we be saved except through the engine ? The 
engine must live. I tell you, it must live!” 


XXII 


D AVID continued to protest vigorously, but, 
in his deepmost consciousness, he knew, 
nevertheless, that the engine was gone. 
For days, weeks, months, he stood while his tem¬ 
ple was shattered into ruins about him, fighting 
relentlessly, admitting despair never, though the 
debris grew steadily higher, threatening to bury 
him in it. And this end he seemed rather to 
greet than to avoid. With this failure, his life 
was rendered meaningless. Edith was lost to him. 
Joseph became a stranded, helpless boy of whom 
he could not bear to think. To resuscitate his 
precious machine was to regain all; to lose it for¬ 
ever was to leave nothing. 

One victory over Ruppert he did achieve, in 
that, despite the banker’s opposition, he became 
receiver for the bankrupt company and was able, 
as he had threatened, to make their losses paral¬ 
lel, cent by cent. But the victory was shallow, 
comfortless, and unnoticed amid the baffling of all 
his schemes to save the engine for which he had 
traded his life; and the time came at last when, 
the buildings sold, all remaining property of the 
firm had to be removed from them. 

On the final day, toward the end of winter, 
David remained with the movers, overseeing the 
work, checking, labeling, doing what could have 
259 


260 QUEST 

been done by Berg or another, had not his love 
kept him in the factory as long as excuse could 
be found, and had not, moreover, his desire to es¬ 
cape the black thoughts which now came to prey 
on him, forced him to the most intense work he 
could find. Evening had fallen when the last 
drayload was driven away. After his supper in 
a small, foul restaurant opposite the machine 
shop, where workmen formerly gathered, David 
stood for a long time gazing at the emptied build¬ 
ings. Then he bowed his head and began slowly 
to walk toward the center of town and the un¬ 
familiar office to which his desk had been taken. 

Before he had gone more than a short distance, 
he stopped, deliberated, kicking one foot against 
the clods of dirt and snow, and then, with head 
still bowed, retraced his steps to the factory, 
quickening his pace, like one returning on a neg¬ 
lected errand. He applied his key to the door 
and entered into the vacant hall and moved for¬ 
ward into the dark silence, his footfalls filling the 
darkness. Avoiding the office, whose deserted 
stillness meant nothing to him but disappoint¬ 
ment and defeat and whose ways had always been 
alien to him, he went on resolutely along the floor 
of the ware-room, through his soles feeling the 
cleated tracks where his engines had moved, till 
he came out upon the balcony of the abandoned 
machine shop, 


QUEST 261 

In the shop nothing was left but the electric 
crane and the machinery which had been sold with 
the building, the polished knobs and bars of which 
a wandering moon discovered and reflected in its 
pale light. With imagination stirred by these 
scattered, gleaming reflections he grasped the bal¬ 
cony rail with his former confidence and leaned 
slightly forward as if to catch an echo of the din 
which should have saluted his appearance there. 
His fantasy became completed. Dead ashes in 
the forges revived; and there arose the clash of 
anvils and the hearty shriek of planers and lathes 
and the clanking and straining of chains. He felt 
his throat grow tight and his legs weak, and fear¬ 
ing to remain, he turned away with the echo in his 
ears, crossed through a moonbeam, seeing his 
breath changed to mist in the chill air, and pulled 
the doors together back of him. 

As he went again into the black hall, he no¬ 
ticed at the opposite end a swinging lantern com¬ 
ing toward him. He continued walked forward 
until a voice ordered him to stop. He halted, saw 
the lantern raised to the level of his head, and 
w r aited until its light illumined his face. 

“Oh, it’s you, is it,” said the watchman with 
the lantern. “A strange time for us to be meet¬ 
ing.” 

“A strange time, yes,” answered David, feeling 
his own voice unfamiliar. 


262 


QUEST 

“A strange night it is, too,” the watchman re¬ 
joined, “with everything gone and the place va¬ 
cant and creaking. It used to be that men were al¬ 
ways working out in the machine shop and the 
rest of the factory was sleeping nice, not dead 
like now. A man of my job shouldn’t be easy 
afraid, but I’ve trembled more than once, and the 
scare you gave me was worse than any. The 
mewing of a cat or the barking of a dog out there 
by the water makes me wish I was deaf. The 
moon’s pale and unfriendly, and the building’s 
full of ghosts, empty the way it is. I shouldn’t 
be saying this, but it’s the way I feel about it.” 

“I, too, have seen ghosts,” said David. 

“A bad night; a bad night. Which way are you 
going?” 

“Which way are you?” 

“My next station’s at the other end of the ma¬ 
chine shop.” 

“I’m going through the ware-room and out 
by the front door,” replied David, choosing his 
direction opposite to that of the watchman’s. 

“Do you want me to go with you?” 

“No.” 

As the old man turned to continue his round, 
David, in afterthought, caught his arm. “Re¬ 
member, you have not seen me here to-night.” 

“Not seen you ?” 

“Yes, you promise to give no word of it?” 


QUEST 263 

“Yes.” The watchman paused. “I understand, 
another ghost.” 

“All right.” 

“Good-night,” said the watchman. 

“Good-night,” David replied. 

As the watchman turned away the second time, 
some of the light from his hooded lantern chanced 
to fall across his face and beard. David stared 
at him, touched him, and then withdrew, feeling 
a thrill of terror, as from an electric contact. In 
the wavering light the face was grimly hollowed 
and the beard lengthened and the familiar shape 
of the man was transformed to another not less 
familiar. He recognized the old man of his im¬ 
agination and recollected what this third appear¬ 
ance was to mean. 

“How long have you been here?” he asked 
huskily. 

“Ever since the factory was built.” 

The words fitting his illusion, fed the torment 
which arose from it. “I’d not be surprised if 
that were so,” he mumbled. 

“Don’t you remember who I am?” asked the 
puzzled watchman. 

“Too easily,” said David, refusing to look full 
at him again. 

The watchman limped on, while David strode 
away with head partly to one side, listening to 
the watchman’s steps and following his course by 


264 QUEST 

the diminishing gleam of his lantern. When the 
light was hidden by the shop doors, David ab¬ 
ruptly changed his direction, walking quietly, as if 
afraid of his own footsteps, to a wide entrance 
near by, which opened upon a loading platform. 
Cautiously he pushed back the heavy door, stepped 
out under the cold sky, and, jumping down from 
the platform, made his way along the track to 
the power-house. He did not go inside, but 
leaned against the window and longingly followed 
the moonlight to the rim of the resting wheel. 
Time passed while he stood there. 

Glancing around, he saw the watchman’s swing¬ 
ing lantern again coming toward him, and, though 
he slunk at once out of the light into the shadows 
at the back of the building, he did not avoid 
being seen. There came a cry to stop and after 
it a pistol shot. With the sinister figure of the 
old man tearing his mind, David crept along the 
wall of the power-house, darted across the open 
space between it and the foundry, ran the length 
of the foundry, his steps rattling the blank win¬ 
dows, and continued, stumbling across the rutted 
testing ground to the railroad gate at the back of 
the lot. There, furtively, he paused to see whether 
or not he were followed, but could discover no 
light but that of the railroad signal lamps and of 
the moon transforming to stark ruins the walls 
of his incompleted buildings. Still looking cau¬ 
tiously back, he unlocked the iron gates, slipped 


QUEST 265 

through the narrow opening which he had made 
for himself, and, closing the gates again, walked 
across the tracks to the edge of the river. 

At first, panting heavily from excitement and 
from running, he wondered why he had come 
there, and then, thinking to hear, as years before 
he had heard, from far back across the yard, the 
peal of the ferryman’s scornful laugh, he recol¬ 
lected, and from the edge of the embankment 
looked down into the river, swirling noisily 
through the heaped-up fragments of its ice. 

He hesitated, and while he hesitated a freight 
train crept by behind him. He turned and curi¬ 
ously watched the even succession of gaping space 
and grinding wheels. He was fascinated by it, 
made a step toward it, and then shook his head. 
No, the river was better. 

The train passed; the water continued to swirl 
through the ice packs and with strained groaning 
to push huge blocks mountainously against the em¬ 
bankment; but still he stood where he was, weary, 
hesitating. At last, without will, or conscious¬ 
ness of defeated will, he shook his head again, 
sighed, and turned away. 

He walked down the tracks until, through an 
unfenced lot, he could make his way to the street 
Involuntarily, he assumed his usual forced pace, 
traversing the dark town and climbing the hill 
which led to his own street and his own house. 


266 QUEST 

Midway in his cut across the frozen lawn he 
stopped and remained standing motionless. 
Through the unshuttered window, he could see 
Edith as she sat sewing by the table lamp. 

Standing there, he was seized with a wild re¬ 
sentment against her, which surged through his 
veins like the swollen river pushing upon the ice 
which restrained it. She it was that had kept 
him from dropping himself into the water, from 
completing at once the ruin which he knew now 
was upon him. Why should he remain when all 
that his life had been spent for was vanished? 
Why should she, either, when the world she had 
brought to him had crumbled in his fingers? What 
was there now for Joseph to live for, or for any 
of them? Better to make an end, an end of all 
of them! 

From where he stood, he watched her intently, 
noticing the deft movements of her fingers, the 
very slight rocking of her chair, the quiet expres¬ 
sion of her face; and this interest in herself and 
her movements for an instant dulled all else in 
his mind so that he thought only of her and felt 
his body warmed in spite of his weariness. But 
what false warmth! She could give him no new 
visions; and the first she had given him was proved 
now a delusion. She had never had faith in the 
engine; she had always harped on its perish- 


QUEST 267 

ability; she had now what she wished. But she 
could not compel him to live after it. What he 
had not done, he had not abandoned but merely 
postponed. The thought of the old man came 
again and of the old man’s presence since the be¬ 
ginning of the factory, and he laughed grimly. 
Perhaps the two were in league. Many recollec¬ 
tions confirmed the idea. His mind became con¬ 
fused. At any rate, he would fool her. Some¬ 
thing yet remained to be done, but after that he 
should have his way. 

He moved away from his position on the lawn 
and walked up to the door. As he came into the 
room, Edith dropped her work in her lap and 
looked up at him, gently inquiring. For a mo¬ 
ment he remained at the portal, frowning; and 
then, although he would have restrained himself 
if he could, he went to her, bent down, and kissed 
her smooth cheek. 


“Don’t get up,” he commanded, “I’ve had sup¬ 
per. There’s nothing for you to do.” 

Edith turned again to her sewing, and David 
took off his coat and came back into the room 
and took a chair near to her. 

“It’s been a hard day for you,” she said softly, 
not looking up. 


268 


QUEST 

“Hard, yes. But we got everything packed up 
and moved away. In two weeks the whole thing 
will be cleaned up.” 

“Two weeks? That is not much time, David.” 

David frowned. “It is not much time, to be 
sure,” he said, “I’ll have to work day and night 
in order to do it, but I don’t care about that. 
That’s the time I had the court set. I’m anxious 
to get through with it. Then we’ll see what’s to 
be done.” 

Edith smiled dubiously, caught by the strained 
manner of his speaking. David went on, watch¬ 
ing her with wary intentness as he talked. “There 
was a man to see me to-day, named Gilman, from 
Toledo, with a new type of roller bearing— 
wanted me to go in with him. His proposition 
looks good, and I’m considering it. We could,” 
with an impatient, disparaging wave of his hand, 
“start in again away from all this. At any rate, 
he’s coming again as soon as I can see him.” 

The reason for this fiction was not altogether 
clear to him, since he did not see how it was to 
aid in the purpose he had set. He saw, though, 
that she was bewildered, and felt that that was 
something; also he saw that she wanted to talk 
to him, and rushed from the subject while he 
could elude her. “In the meantime, I have a way 
to fool them here,” he broke off. “Three days 
from now I hold the final sale of the company’s 


QUEST 269 

assets. I can’t bid, of course; but to-morrow I’m 
going to see Henry Crosby and get him to bid for 
me. Nobody here knows him, and nobody but 
me knows what’s worth buying. The combina¬ 
tion ought to work pretty well.” 

He was bent on keeping her silent. He was 
driven by fear of what she might say, did not 
wish to know what was in her mind; and the fear 
raised itself to an obsession. He strove to ignore 
her and override her. So, again, on the second 
morning after, returning from his visit. “Henry’s 
coming to-night; I was sure he would. I’ve listed 
for him the securities I wanted; and he’ll bid on 
them, rather indifferently, but so as to get them. 
My part’s to keep the rest from noticing him, or 
getting interested in what he is buying. I have to 
laugh at them already.” Nevertheless, he did 
not laugh, and his face was as darkly set as his 
voice had been without elation. 

“You have a cold,” said Edith anxiously, no¬ 
ticing a cough which he had tried to hide. 

“Yes, a little one. The sleeper was draughty.” 

“You had better do something for it, dear.” 

“Oh, it’s no matter,” David brushed the sug¬ 
gestion aside, “I’m getting in touch with that To¬ 
ledo man again to-day.” 

Crosby arrived in the night, before the day 
of the auction and, in order to preserve the con¬ 
cealment on which depended the success of his er- 


2 7 o QUEST 

rand, slept at the hotel instead of at David’s 
house. At the gathering the next morning, he 
and David did not recognize each other. He bid 
as he had been instructed, and, being unknown 
and unsuspected, his bidding attracted so little 
attention that the outwardly unattractive lots came 
to him at his own price. On leaving the court¬ 
room at the conclusion of the sale, he caught 
David’s eye and winked slyly, receiving in reply 
only an impassive nod. He thought David a 
trifle over-cautious, but then the secrecy and the 
supposed impropriety of the stratagem awakened 
and fed his ill-nourished appetite for the colorful 
and paid him well for his trouble. He left town 
as quietly as he had entered it, to return again 
and probably for the rest of his life to his job¬ 
bing of farm machinery and his incidental gam¬ 
bling in grain. 

The day had brought the rawest weather of 
late February, with a misty rain, against whose 
penetrating coldness no protection could avail. 
Through this, David, in dark satisfaction, walked 
back to his office, there tossed aside his wet coat, 
and set himself at once to work on his final report. 
Evening overtook him while he worked. He 
closed his desk and locked his office. While he 
waited for a street car, he felt the dampness of 
his coat on his shoulders and was chilled by the 
moisture which seeped through his shoes. No 


QUEST 271 

car was in sight; and, unwilling to endure delay, 
although his activity would bring him no saving 
of time, he started walking. When at last a car 
came up with him, he decided that the remaining 
distance was too short to ride, and continued 
walking. By the time he reached home, his feet 
and shoulders were thoroughly wet, but he did 
not speak of that to Edith or change his clothes 
as she would have bidden him. At the table he 
talked sparsely of his success at the auction, and 
as soon as their supper was ended, he again put 
on his wet overcoat. 

“You’re not going back?” Edith asked, plead¬ 
ing with him to stay. 

“Yes, that report’s due soon now, you know.” 

“The court will certainly give you more time 
if you ask for it. Your cold is worse; you ought 
to be taking care of yourself. Please, don’t go.” 

“The cold’s nothing. It will make no differ¬ 
ence in a day or two anyway.” He frowned at 
what he feared was too great obviousness. “I’ve 
got to get things cleaned up as soon as possible. 
Gilman will be here early next month, and I have 
to be free to talk with him.” 

“Did Harry go back?” Edith asked. 

“Yes, he probably left on the two o’clock for 
Decatur,” he answered brusquely. 

“It was too bad he could not come to see 
us. He has never been here.” 


272 QUEST 

“It wouldn’t have done just at this time.” 
David was standing impatiently at the door, irri¬ 
tated at her delaying questions. 

“I’ll have something ready for you when you 
come home,” said Edith. 

“Oh, don’t bother.” 

He kissed her in the hot conflict of his passions 
and went out into the chilling rain. 


His frenzy completed his work before the al¬ 
lotted time. His record was finished and sent 
to the court. He left the office with a heaviness 
of mind which bordered on stupor, and let his 
weighted feet carry him homeward. While he 
walked, the phantoms from which this last furious 
labor had freed him crept once more to his heels 
and, finding him now too weary to outrun them, 
fastened themselves and dragged after him. The 
grizzly-bearded fate which had been with him 
since the beginning of the factory, which had al¬ 
ways been with him, as in anguish he believed, 
walked at his side. At the other side appeared 
old Newton, whose life he had forced to inter¬ 
twine with his own until both had been torn down 
in ruin. Newton’s peril lay heavily against his 
heart. He had wrecked him once, and saved him 
only to make his undoing more irrevocable. And 
Edith—at the thought of her a thousand con- 


QUEST 273 

fusions assailed him. He felt all the hotness of 
desire and the folly of all desire, his fear and re¬ 
sentment, his fetish-like adoration. He had to 
grasp the rail as he mounted the steps of his 
porch, and he trembled violently as he stood at 
the door. 

The next morning he did not arise. His cough 
had become more painful; his breathing was 
rapid and shallow and difficult; his lips were livid 
and bore a dusky flush; his throat was so hoarse 
that he could scarcely speak. 


XXIII 


E DITH found herself in an old role, which 
she took up sadly, though with readiness, 
since again she had been waiting for it, 
knowing that she could do nothing to prevent its 
coming. The doctor told her that the attack was 
of broncho-pneumonia. She was not surprised. 
A lingering cold, continued exposure, and the ex¬ 
hausting fever of work could have produced noth¬ 
ing else. 

On the first morning of his admitted illness, 
David was restless, ashamed, even in the resigned 
extremity which he had reached, of being help¬ 
less and in need of attention. He had been ready 
to walk boldly to his destruction, but he could not 
endure to be tripped up by it in manner other 
than of his willing. This thing had come two 
days too soon. At the end of that time he would 
have been beyond its touch; but now he rebelled 
against another defeat and resolved with his old 
firmness that it could not be, that it was not. 

He insisted on seeing his secretary. Edith, af¬ 
ter attempting to dissuade him, at length yielded; 
and the young woman came. While he dictated 
to her, Edith, standing near, saw how some of the 
bluish tinge departed from his lips, how his old 
vigor lined his mouth and his brows contracted 
274 


QUEST 275 

into their keen, absorbed expression, so that his 
illness did actually appear to have lessened. 

At the end of an hour, having finished, he gave 
parting instructions respecting the preservation of 
the ingrained routine which contrary instructions 
could hardly have altered. 

“Hadn’t you better write to Gilman to post¬ 
pone his visit until you are well?” Edith sug¬ 
gested. 

“It’s not necessary. He’ll not come till I send 
for him,” David answered quickly. 

The secretary went away and the disease crept 
back upon him. His breathing grew more la¬ 
bored. An occasional hacking cough sent a tre¬ 
mor through his body. He attempted no longer 
to talk, but lay with eyes closed, sometimes sleep¬ 
ing. 

With a shawl about her shoulders, Edith sat 
beside him in the cold room. All other concerns 
disappeared from her mind. Early in the day 
she had telegraphed for her sister Ruth to come 
to care for the children, and Ruth came by night¬ 
fall. But, had she failed to come, Edith’s neglect 
would have been no less easy. David alone was 
real to her and the illness whose watch she ri¬ 
valed. She could not divide her love, could not 
spare herself from this one duty so long as he 
needed her; and she sat sadly on, finding her ef- 


276 QUEST 

forts of little avail, feeling her strength crushed 
beneath the helplessness which was imposed upon 
it. 

The disease baffled her, as all about him had 
baffled her; and, in the indistinct words which rose 
from his delirium, to be checked before their 
meaning could be clear, she seemed to find the 
symbol of their life together. The thought came 
to her—what if he should die?—but she dared 
not to think farther. She loved him; she felt no 
doubt of her love. All emotion became lost in 
the benumbing fear of loss. She drew the shawl 
tight about her, clasping her hands between her 
breasts, and watched. 


So without change passed three days, and in 
the greatness of suspense she found a certain tran¬ 
quility. Then, on the evening of the third, when, 
returning after .her short visit to the children, 
she opened the door at the end of the hall, she 
was met with an atmosphere of strangeness, of 
unmistakable change. The sound of David’s 
breathing, like wind grating through sand, she 
did not hear; and the dim room was heavily si¬ 
lent. 

She rushed to the bed, placed her face close 
to his, and found that he was sleeping easily, 
quietly. She touched his forehead and felt it 


QUEST 277 

damp with perspiration. For an instant *she 
dropped to her knees and buried her face in the 
coverlet. Then she got up quickly, wrapped the 
bedclothes closely around him and placed another 
blanket over his feet, in care to prevent a recur¬ 
rence of chill. She drew her chair near to the 
bed and sat listening to the joyful quietness of 
his breathing. Her eyes were moist, though she 
did not weep; her throat was tight; her heart beat 
rapidly. Her tranquillity was gone, because the 
future had come once more to exist. With her 
tired body freshened and her mind now astir, she 
let all her long hope for a moment revive. But, 
looking at him through the darkness, seeing him 
as the years at other times had shown him, she 
held herself back and resolved to wait for what 
his revival might tell her. 

Late the next morning, David awoke to con¬ 
sciousness, worn by the struggle he had made, 
bearing no sensation but profound weariness. 
Weariness he felt everywhere, in the weakness of 
his arms, in the familiarity of the room, in Edith’s 
tired eyes. Gradually, during the day and the 
days which followed, his mind worked back to the 
point where his illness had started and, with in¬ 
communicative silence, reflected upon the horror 
of his failure and the resolution to which it had 
brought him. The anger which first had been 
aroused against the interference of the disease 


278 QUEST 

was burned out, and the fight to throw it off, which 
he had made instinctively, was suppressed now 
his will was again consciously active. He accepted 
it for what it was worth to him and decided to 
let it serve his purpose. 

His eyes followed Edith as she moved about 
the room, waited at the door when she was gone, 
and rested on her when she sat beside him. He 
was filled with vague emotions, wistful, longing, 
regretful; but he did not speak save to answer 
obscurely to what she had asked. Weariness and 
indifference overcame him, and anguish, too, when 
his thoughts touched upon the past; and there 
was nothing excepting the past for them to seek. 
The doctor soon noticed that instead of getting 
stronger, he Became perceptibly weaker, laying 
himself fatally open to a relapse, but found no 
way of meeting an influence his drugs could not 
adjure. Edith, also, observed his decline and la¬ 
bored in darkness almost as great. Her attempts 
to rouse him brought no response; and she would 
raise her eyes in the telling of some story of the 
children or of the neighborhood to be puzzled by 
the knowing manner in which he was smiling at 
her. She begged him to talk, but he turned away 
and kept to himself. 

One morning, he conferred with his lawyer 
about his will, cautioning him, “Don’t say any¬ 
thing about this to Mrs. Bullard; it worries her.” 


QUEST 279 

He was still oppressed with Newton, and finally 
designated him to supply repairs for the engines. 
“The income from that’ll last longer than he’ll 
have any need for,” he remarked, satisfied that 
his mind was rid of the old man. On the same 
day, Berg, his foreman, called, asking for his re¬ 
lease—he had been offered a place in a factory at 
Havana. 

“You’d better take it,” David urged, “you’ll 
make more money than you ever did here.” 

“I know, but that’s the only thing. It won’t be 
like here,” Berg answered slowly. “Here it was 
ours.” 

“Yes, we kind of grew up with it together, 
didn’t we,” David reflected and turned away. 

Later in the afternoon, after the others had 
gone, Edith sat with him again. She bent over 
him smoothing the spread with her hand. David 
attempted to push her hand away and then caught 
it and held it weakly. She did not move, but, still 
leaning over him, heard her heart beating and felt 
the trembling of her lips. Presently he glanced 
toward her with his puzzling smile and looked 
steadily into her eyes. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, 
feebly pressing her hand. 

Edith tried to smile. “What are you?” she 
whispered. 

“Too much to say.” Keeping his grasp of her 


280 QUEST 

hand, he let his eyes once more wander to the 
ceiling. For a while they did not speak. 

“Berg was right,” David mused, “the engine 
was ours, every bolt, every plate. Whatever 
comes after it is nothing. You never understood.” 

Edith sadly shook her head. “No, I have never 
understood you, wholly. From our first time it 
was so. You puzzled me, frightened me. You 
made me pity you and feel afraid for you, of you. 
There was always something.” Her eyes en¬ 
treated him. “What is it you have been strug¬ 
gling for, David? What is St that has driven 
you so cruelly?” 

He shook his head slowly on the pillow. “Noth¬ 
ing. I never could say it in words.” He frowned. 
“Yet I—it’s useless. I’m too tired.” He broke 
off again. “But I did want you to see.” 

“What of the new factory?” Edith asked. 

David gave a weary laugh. “There can be no 
new factory. That roller bearing business was 
only a joke. There never was any Gilman. You 
must have guessed that.” 

“Then why did you keep talking about it?” 

“To keep you from knowing.” 

He turned to avoid her eyes. 

“You planned all this, David?” 

“Not this way. But it will do.” 

Edith leaned toward him, speaking with the 


QUEST 281 

quiet force of hopelessness. “Do you remember, 
David, how one time you pitied my father for not 
having a son? You could be that son if you 
wished. He is getting too old to run the farm 
by himself, and, besides, he, too, has had trouble 
lately and needs help to restore him. You could 
do all that, David—you could carry the farm on 
after him, though now he has given up hope that 
that can be done.” 

David shook his head with resigned obstinacy. 
“No, that would be nothing. It would have no 
touch of my desire in it. It would be doing some¬ 
one else’s work, not my own.” 

“Everyone sees his desire go,” said Edith 
quietly, “it is better to fulfill the work of another 
than to cling to a dream which has departed.” She 
paused. “It is better to submit and forget and 
give oneself to the need of another.” 

“That is weak,” David objected impatiently. 

“It is weaker to die for something that has 
ceased to exist.” 

David withdrew his hand, but said nothing. 

After a while he glanced at her with a smile 
mingled with bitterness and childishness. “When 
I was a boy,” he confided, “I used to dream a lot 
of being a hero.” 

“You have been a hero, many times, dear.” 
All the tender belief in her heart was in her voice. 


282 QUEST 

She leaned toward him, but David moved un¬ 
easily away. 

“No,” he said, “I know well enough what I 
have been. My father said it for me.” 


That night he lay long awake brooding upon 
the thoughts which had filled his days and trying 
to cling to the dark comfort which they had given. 
But their power was gone and the palliating an¬ 
guish he could drink from them had degenerated 
to a potion of sterile flatness. He felt a restless 
moving of his blood and frowned in the heavy 
darkness of the room, wondering what was tak¬ 
ing place within him. 

Then a sudden vision of a stripped field with 
loaded wagons lumbering with fruitfulness be¬ 
neath a blue sky filled his mind. He could see the 
engine—his own, for which purpose it was built— 
separating the wheat which his own hands had 
planted, could feel the burning of the sun and the 
choking dust of the stacker. He stood on a high 
knoll overlooking his fields, and his plans grew 
with the expanding of his vision, each fed by the 
other. Joseph, his son, was with him again, 
resurrected from dead thoughts. 

“Edith,” he called before he could check him¬ 
self and then regretted his suddenness. Edith 
came from her cot to his bedside. 


QUEST 283 

n I think we shall go to the farm,” he said so¬ 
berly. 

She made no reply. 

“When can we go?” he asked. 

“As soon as you are a little better.” 

“All right. I want to sell out here as soon as 
possible. Forgive me for waking you up, won’t 
you?” He caught her fingers, as they brushed 
over his counterpane and kissed them. 

Edith went back to her cot; and, when, in the 
depth of the night, she awoke again from her 
thin sleep to see if he had need of her, she found 
him resting quietly and soundly. She touched his 
forehead and perceived that it was cool and dry 
as she would have wished. She gently took the 
wrist of his hand which had escaped the blanket 
and could, it seemed to her, measure his pulse by 
the beating of her heart. 

Yet she bore no foolish expectancy, poignant 
though her hope was. Something in him had been 
restored. She had done that. He would get 
well; he would go to the farm as she had sug¬ 
gested; he would be with her indefinite years still. 
But she knew that would be all. With the restora- 
ion she had wrought would be revived also that 
other thing she had fought against but could not 
name. The religion of the plow, which she had 
known of old, would displace the religion of the 
engine; and in the two there was no difference. 


284 QUEST 

She smiled and lifted her head. She could wait 
gs always she had waited. 

She thought of her son. Perhaps in his time 
would come the miracle she had hoped to bring; 
perhaps, later still. Her faith was not held by 
time. She took the lean, hard fingers in her own 
She had waited. She could wait. 


THE END. 


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